Korean Quarterly

Giving Voice to the Korean American Community

book review

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.

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.

Solidarity and sisterhood equal survival

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If I had Your Face ~ By Frances Cha

(Ballantine Books, New York, 2021, ISBN #978-0-5931-2946-3)

Review by Bill Drucker (Summer 2024)

The provocative title, hinting at feminine longings, is an effective one for this story told from the perspective of five young Korean women, Kyuri, Miho, Ara, Sujin, and Wonna, as they navigate their lives in competitive modern Seoul, including careers, relationships and personal dreams. The narrative explores Korean social mores, including beauty standards for women, and women’s roles in society.  

Despite an image of a progressive nationhood, South Korea is still exists in a cultural pendulum swinging from aspirations of modern liberalism to the Confucian, patriarchal society that has sustained the country for thousands of years. The nation works toward prosperity, but still has a wide rich-poor gap that the South Korean leadership seems not to desire to change.

Author Frances Cha has produced an engaging story which examines modern Korea’s issues of gender, identity and status, social norms and attitudes through the voices of her characters. Kyuri is the enviable one, from a conventional perspective; she is described as a dazzling beauty who attracts the attention of men and the envy of other women.  She works at a room salon, where her job is to entertain rich men.

Kyuri shares an office-tel (small apartment) with artist Miho. Miho is connected to society’s upper echelons through her artwork, but cannot participate in that lifestyle, and has a precarious relationship with a rich boy, Hanbin, heir to a conglomerate. It is a dizzying world of wealth and prestige, but Miho is very wary of material and social trappings. 

Her friend Sujin wants what Kyuri has – money and attention. She believes it is all due to Kyuri’s beauty, and Sujiin is willing to undergo painful and expensive plastic surgery to be beautiful like her friend.  Sujin is the voice of “oh, if I had your face.”  Hair stylist Ara is Sujin’s roommate.  While Ara tries to inject reason into Sujin’s obsession, she also has one of her own; she is a mad fan of a Kpop star. 

Last is Wonna, married to a nice but fumbling husband and succumbing to a life of being a housewife and mother, or so she thinks at first.  After several miscarriages, Wonna becomes pregnant.  As her concern for her unborn child grows, her marriage starts to disintegrate

All of the characters are smart, if at times blinded by relationships, social pressures, and personal desires.   All of the characters in their own ways are observing life at the top economic and social classes in Korea, although they are able to mix in that world only in a minor way.  By the luck of their birth, they do not have the background to ever aspire to it.

Kyuri invests in her looks with expensive cosmetics, but she also saves her money, knowing that her life as a hostess cannot last forever. Once, Kyuri observes a woman who walks into the room salon and seems to own it.  Kyuri can see that the woman is only average looking, but she seems to possess wealth and status, which gets the attention of the men around her. Kyuri admires that quality but feels she will never attain it.   

Ara has a good job at a hair salon.  She is worried that her Kpop star is becoming hugely popular and will soon leave Korea for a world tour. The price of a ticket is now far beyond Ara’s reach.  At the hair salon, a clumsy new girl, Cherry, grates at Ara.  At closing, Ara tells the manager she will clean and close up shop, but that Cherry should help.  When Cherry does a poor job on the bathroom, Ara yanks Cherry’s ponytail and shoves the lazy girl’s face into the (purportedly) clean toilet.  

At home, Sujin, still bandaged after her plastic surgery, tells Ara that she looks worse than her.  Sujin gives Ara a ticket to see her Kpop star, as an early birthday gift.  Ara stares at the ticket and starts to cry.

In the background, a solidarity of sisterhood galvanizes the group of women in this story as they encounter oppression and setbacks.  They may slight each other, and be judgmental, but they are a tight-knit and loyal bunch.  After working long days, they often meet for soju and food. Even Hanbin, rich son of a film celebrity, takes a stool in his expensive outfit. The women enjoy men’s attention, but can be hostile in response to unwarranted advances.

Cha underplays the men’s roles.  Hanbin is handsome, well educated, and well heeled.  He was the boyfriend of Ruth, an art dealer who committed suicide.  After her death, he gravitates to Miho.  When he can’t get his way with Miho, he scowls and retreats.  The women observe this behavior with scorn, saying that since he is good looking and rich, he could not be nice as well.  

Other men in Seoul are attentive and obsequious.  At the cheap bars, the women get additional service, free drinks and food.  Some men, rejected, walk off like petulant pups.  Bruce, a frequent salon guest, when slighted by Kyuri, takes petty revenge.  The owner slaps Kyuri in front of everyone to placate Bruce.  The message is that Kyuri has to appear to know her place, as a show for the clientele.  In fact, the owner knows Kyuri’s value as an employee and would not fire her. 

Wonna, the married woman of the group, suffers a disastrous marriage breakup when her husband, after pressuring her to have a child, walks away when he loses his job and feels he can’t deal with a family.

In the course of the story, the women progress in their lives and attain certain degrees of maturity.  Miho knows that she doesn’t need Hanbin to fulfill her artistic ambitions.  Ara knows not to obsess anymore.  Even Sujin, so desperate and willing go through the cost and pain to look pretty, realizes, like Kyuri, that this life won’t last.  At a soju-jib (portable tent bar with plastic stools), she gets admiring looks from the men.  Kyuri tells Sujin not to pay attention.  Sujin replies “Let me enjoy this.”

The author describes the Korean obsession with surgically-enhanced looks, but refrains from ridicule. Instead, she describes the topic in a serious way.  The obsession with cosmetic enhancements is a contradiction of the Korean appreciation of natural aesthetics.  In a recent Miss Korea beauty pageant, nearly all of the contestants looked alike; similar versions of the perfect Korean woman’s face. Should one laugh or cry?

The narratives are witty, sometimes gritty, and grounded in urban Korean experience.  Cha is familiar with Korean values, since she was born there, and western values, because she was educated in the U.S.  In its tone, however, the novel feels very Korean.  Cha does not interject any western feminist ideas into the story.  The five young women struggle through work and the many complications of their lives in very Korean environment, showing that they are smart, capable, resilient and unfailingly supportive of one another.

Cha writes with a realistic feel for urban Korea. The five very different women characters provide the author with a wide variety of topics and voices.  Though they are developed as social prototypes, the women are sympathetic representatives.  Her treatment of each character is engaging and skilled, and her writing carries humor and pathos.

The author grew up in the U.S., Hong Kong, and South Korea.  She attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire as an undergrad, and received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University, New York.  She has taught in both American and Korean colleges.  She resides in Brooklyn (New York) and in Seoul, South Korea.

One brother’s crossing

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Nuclear Family ~ By Joseph Han

(Counterpoint Press, Berkeley, 2022, ISBN# 978-1-64009-594-6)

Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2024)

At first glance, the Cho clan in Joseph Han’s debut novel Nuclear Family seems like a typical Korean American immigrant family in Honolulu. With the help of their 20-something daughter Grace, Umma and Appa run a popular Korean plate lunch restaurant (“plate lunch” is a very Hawaiian reference to an old-fashioned restaurant serving hot lunches.) Grace’s older brother Jacob has a job teaching English in South Korea, as part of his broader quest to learn more about his heritage. The building of the restaurant business has not been easy for the family, but Appa thinks they are finally on their way to achieving the American Dream.

Then one day, while working at the restaurant, Grace hears a story on TV about a Korean American man who was shot while attempting to cross the DMZ into North Korea. Who would attempt to pull off such a ridiculous and dangerous stunt? But then she looks more closely at the television, and notices that the man in question looks suspiciously like her brother. It couldn’t be…

But of course it is Jacob, and soon she has to break the news to her parents that their son (who was shot but not killed) is now being detained by the North Korean government. Soon it’s all over the local and international news, with the general consensus being that Jacob was a spy, though for whom it’s not clear.

In the ensuing weeks, Umma and Appa attempt to recover from their shock, while also mourning the loss of many of their regular customers, including old friends who avoid eye contact on the street. They also receive several prank calls telling them to go back to North Korea where they came from, even though neither of them has ever been there.

Appa’s nerves are frayed. On top of their son’s dangerous predicament, they were so close to opening up a second location of the restaurant and finally being able to purchase their own house. After his son’s crossing of the DMZ, and the news about it, business is flagging.  He becomes very short-tempered, and when a cockroach lands on Umma in the restaurant, he freaks out and tries to kill it, which is not a good look in front of their few remaining customers.

Grace tries her best to dissociate herself from the stress by avoiding her parents and getting high with her friend David whenever possible. Suddenly, the façade of the perfect Korean American family has come crashing down.

Han’s chapters shift back and forth in time between various family member’s perspectives, including the isolated Jacob. The author hints at some reasons why Jacob may have attempted a crossing of the DMZ. We learn that during a tourist-trap tour of the DMZ, Jacob became incensed at his tour guide’s simplistic depiction of the Korean War, and how the role of the U.S. is conveniently left out. Why not tell the whole story, and explain that Korea was just a convenient playground for superpowers with larger international agendas?

Back home in Hawaii, Appa fears for his son Jacob’s health and safety, but he also does not know how to connect with his own son. Years ago, he saw Jacob crossing the street in Chinatown and was about to roll down his window and ask if he needed a ride, but then he saw that Jacob was holding hands with another man. Was that really Jacob, or were his eyes deceiving him? Without a clear conclusion, he drove away in silence.

In addition to the four main members of the nuclear family, Han includes the perspectives of his grandparents, Halmeoni and Haraboeji, and the stories of how they were separated from their own family members during the Korean War. Halmeoni is now old and weak, and can barely walk without help, but she remembers being a little girl in Korea, walking up and down the vast Korean peninsula searching for her family. We learn that Harabeoji had another family in Korea that he was separated from before he met Jacob and Grace’s Halmeoni and started a new family.

The author uses his text in creative ways, sometimes repeating the same word over and over across an entire page to convey the DMZ, or a squiggly line in the form of the 38th parallel (which is not a straight line, as those familiar with Korean geography will know) to divide sections or chapters.

Han also draws upon his own experiences as a Korean American in Hawaii to depict the lives of the fictional Cho family sharing quirky insider tidbits about the unique Asian American melting pot of Honolulu. In January 2018, people living in Hawaii woke up to an emergency alert on their phones, saying that there was an incoming ballistic missile and that they should seek immediate shelter. Many thought that it was North Korea dropping a nuclear weapon on Hawaii, and said goodbye to their loved ones. Clearly, it was a false alarm, but one that woke many people up to what was really important in their lives – this incident is also reflected in the lives of the Cho family.  

The stories of each member of the Cho family epitomize the Korean concept of han – the feeling of grief, resentment, and regret stemming from so many individuals’ stories, as well as the collective history of Korea as a colonized land taken over by foreign powers and divided into two, a move that has divided families for more than 70 years.  The division of Korea is now a permanent wound that is a unique and painful part of Korean and Korean American culture, and reverberates in the lives of all Korean families today.  

Musing and stress eating

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I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki ~ By Sehee Baek

(Anton Hur, trans., Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2022, ISBN# 978-1-5266-5086-3)

Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2024)

The cheeky cover of Sehee Baek’s  I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki has a whimsical graphic novel-type illustration of a young woman laying face-down at the edge of her bed, huge bubble-sized tears being ejected from her eyes, while reaching out with her chopsticks for a delicious bowl of tteokbokki on the floor. It looks like she is in a momentary funk, and stress-eating the most delicious late-night snack in the world.

However, this playful cover design is a bit misleading, as readers soon learn. Baek struggles with dysthymia, or persistent mild depression, and her slim “therapy memoir” is a collection of her random musings and conversations with her psychiatrist. In the introduction, she explains that she wrote the book as a record of her struggles and her progress, with the hope of moving in a more positive direction.

Baek’s honesty about her depression is both disarming and refreshing at the same time. She shares quite personal details and dark emotions, and is unafraid of expressing her annoyance at other people who try to help her. “Sometimes, when someone tells me to ‘cheer up’ when I’m going through a tough time, I just want to wring their neck.”

Baek includes some simple and useful advice from her psychiatrist, words that all of us can benefit from. For example, Baek puts an inordinately high value on how other people perceive her, which sometimes leads her to spiralling into depression. Her psychiatrist points out that how she thinks about herself is far more important than what others think about her, and we then get to see how Baek does her best to apply this advice to her life in real time.

It’s hard to know exactly how to take in I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. Is the author being brutally honest about her depression, or is part of it performative? Does she really put her depressive thoughts on hold in order to eat tteokbokki? If she is really being honest, it is admirable that she’s putting herself out there and being vulnerable, but at the same time, don’t we all have these similar thoughts, wondering what people truly think of our work, and aren’t we all to some extent insecure about how we look or self-conscious about something dumb that we just said? Perhaps it is the novelty of her sharing of these musings that makes it a ground-breaking, clever book.

Portraits of ordinary elders who survived extraordinary times

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Grandmothers, Our Grandmothers: Remembering the “Comfort Women” of World War II ~ By Seong-won Han

(Tuttle Publishing, North Clarendon/VT, 2023, ISBN #978-0-8048-5663-8)

Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2024)

About 20 years ago, artist and historian Seong-won Han’s work on a documentary on war and women led him to the stories of Korean women who survived military sexual slavery by the Japanese, the so-called “comfort women.”  These women were abducted and taken to what the Japanese called “comfort stations” to be repeatedly raped by members of the Japanese Imperial Army. The comfort stations were located throughout their conquered territories in Asia during World War II.

In 2019, he interviewed about a dozen of these women, who were in their 80s and 90s; he also drew portraits of them. Han compiled these drawings, interviews, and accompanying text into the slim but powerful volume Grandmothers, Our Grandmothers:  Remembering the “Comfort Women” of World War II.

Though Han’s book may look like a graphic novel, as much of it is formatted in cartoon-like panels, he treats his interview subjects with great reverence, introducing each halmoni (the Korean term for grandmother) at the beginning of each section with a color portrait and short biography. Some of the women are depicted in simple line drawings and a stark black background, and others are depicted in more detailed paintings with gorgeous backgrounds.

Rather than focusing on the years of terror and violence through which these women suffered, Han’s goal was to focus on their strength and resilience, and the new lives that they created after the war ended. He wanted to write about the women as regular halmonis, mothers, neighbors, and friends, whom readers may have encountered without knowing anything about their past lives.

Despite Han’s desire to focus on the positive, there is no denying the horrendous suffering that these women endured, and he includes their painful but important histories in his narration. For example, one of the interviewees, Gab-soon Choi, was only 15 years old when she was taken by the Japanese Imperial Army to a Japanese base camp in Manchuria, where she suffered unbelievable atrocities. After the war, she walked south to her home, traveling for more than four years, begging for food along the way. She lived the rest of her life alone, until her death in 2015 at the age of 96. Han’s drawing of Choi is breathtakingly beautiful, as she sits looking up at the stars, waiting for the apology from the Japanese government that never came.

Another interviewee, Gun-ja Kim, was born in Pyeongchang in 1926, and at age 17 she was already engaged to be married when she was kidnapped and transported to a Japanese comfort station in China. She attempted to escape many times, but was beaten each time, becoming deaf in one ear. After the war ended, she returned home to her fiancé, but due to the shame, he committed suicide. Her baby daughter also died at only five-months old. She lived with these multiple sources of pain until she died in 2017 at the age of 91. Still, she spent her life advocating for others, and donated her life savings of 100 million won ($760,000) to a Korean foundation to help students pay their tuition. Han uses wide brushstrokes and only four colors to paint Kim, whose eyes twinkle with joy in her portrait.  

Most of Han’s drawings are in a simple comic book style, but he includes about 10 more realistic paintings of the grandmothers at the end of the book. Perhaps they had a say in how he depicted them, as their personalities seem to emerge here, either playfully in a field of flowers, regally in a full length flowing hanbok, or a close up showing gray hair and the deep creases of both hardship and strength. The subject matter is difficult, but the end result is not to be missed.

How war preserved a ribbon of land

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Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ ~ By Eleana J. Kim

(Duke University Press, Durham/NC, 2022, ISBN #978-1-4780-1835-3)

Review by John Feffer (Summer 2024)

I have had the rare opportunity to visit the Demilitarized Zone from both sides of the divided Korean peninsula. On the northern side, the excursion was part of an itinerary to demonstrate to visiting Americans the peaceful intentions of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the aggressive posture of the joint U.S. and South Korean forces.

Our North Korean military guide was mostly intent on proving that the U.S. and its puppet ally had constructed a concrete wall spanning the peninsula along the DMZ that could only be seen by binoculars from the northern side. The view through the lenses was not convincing, although South Korea indeed has put in anti-tank fortifications along the border that might, if you squint at a section obscured by trees, look like a wall.

The trip from the southern side was organized by a peace organization and focused on the poignant reminders of a divided land and a separated people: We viewed the severed train line, the razor wire, the evidence of land mines, the abandoned buildings, the military installations. Also accessible from the south were the farming villages that abut the Civilian Control Line, which marks the beginning of a highly regulated area just south of the DMZ.

What lies between the two frontiers that one can visit from the north and the south is a narrow band of land that stretches across the 160-mile width of the Korean peninsula. The DMZ is a mere 2.5 miles wide. Given the million-plus landmines in the area as well as the military installations on either side, it is far from a “demilitarized” zone.

But the DMZ, because of the absence of people in that 2.5-mile-wide strip, has also been celebrated as a nature preserve, home to cranes, bears, and otters. For several decades, activists and academics have emphasized this ecological rarity — a strictly monitored no-go zone — as a potential model for transforming the division of the peninsula into a jointly-administered peace park. Let the animals show the way.

For the most part, the governments of both sides have not cooperated on such a vision, either because of cycles of mutual hostility or, when that hostility has ebbed, the ambitious plans they have cooked up together to promote economic cooperation that would come at the expense of this militarized nature preserve. 

These are the contradictions that Eleana Kim explores in her book Making Peace with Nature, a deep dive into three case studies of nature in and around the DMZ. She looks at how ponds, birds, and landmines all challenge conventional notions of the DMZ as a pristine preserve, a land of economic opportunity, and/or a zone of peace.

Along the way, she grapples with the essential problem facing those who desire an environmentally sustainable reunification of the peninsula. When the two Koreas are at odds with one another, nature flourishes during the standoff. But when the two countries are busy negotiating — as they did during the era of the sunshine policy and, again, during Moo-Hyun Roh’s subsequent “peace and prosperity” tenure — their joint plans for economic development cut right through the zone of biodiversity, just as a reconnected north-south train line, in the works for a couple decades, would eventually do. “Peace and life” was one such South Korean government tagline, and both sides have also spoken of “peaceful utilization.” Environmentalists, however, see through these anodyne slogans to the grubbier economic plans that threaten the balance of nature in and around the DMZ.

That balance, Kim explains, can be seen not just in the large and easier-to-spot mammals (bears, deer) that live in or near the DMZ. It can be found also in the humble pond, or dumbeong, that support an endangered giant water bug and a variety of aquatic plants. These are not untouched areas. In the inhabited region south of the DMZ proper, where farmers grow rice and other products, the dumbeong are an old-fashioned resource for irrigating rice paddies. The geopolitical peculiarities of the DMZ region have thus preserved older forms of human interaction with nature.

Birds, meanwhile, have become a prominent symbol of the shadow reunification of the peninsula, for they cross back and forth across the DMZ without any regard to military checkpoints. Ornithologists on both sides of the border have long engaged in the routine banding of birds to determine their migration and flight patterns, discovering in the process this aerial reunification. Kim cites the famous story of a pair of father-son ornithologists separated by the Korean War. The son, based in the south, received a notification one day that one of the birds that he had banded, a purple-backed starling, had been captured and identified in the north by none other than his father.

“Due to the near-total impossibility of communicating between the two Koreas, neither father nor son had known during the intervening 15 years whether the other had survived the war,” Kim writes. “As the story goes, Pyong-Oh’s parents treasured the aluminum metal band, imprinted with the code C7635, weeping as they caressed it, missing their distant son.”

But, as she points out, this sentimental story obscures the fact that the birds are not free, how their existence depends on places to feed, rest, and breed, and those are under constant threat from human encroachment in the form of farming, industry, residential construction, and military installations. At the same time, the military standoff between the two Koreas has also preserved sites vital for their survival. And despite the standoff, the flyways of the birds have led to transnational networks of scientific cooperation that go well beyond the father-son team separated by the DMZ.

Kim’s third case study, landmines, deliberately challenges the notion of a pristine environmental enclave at the DMZ. Upwards of a million landmines are buried in and around the zone. Accidentally triggering these mines, farmers and other residents of the towns bordering the DMZ have lost their limbs and their lives. Periodic flooding has sent mines even further south, and the government in Seoul has been slow to acknowledge, much less compensate, the victims of these mines.

Though a powerful chapter, the section on landmines reveals a curious blind spot in the research. Kim rarely discusses how North Korea has contributed to the militarization and environmental degradation of the border region. She hammers home the unfortunate reality that neither the U.S. nor South Korea has signed the Treaty to Ban Landmines, but fails to point out that North Korea hasn’t signed it either. For obvious reasons, Kim was not able to conduct research on the other side of the border. But she has a tendency in the book to ascribe all negative attributes of border militarization to the U.S. and South Korea, as if North Korea is just a passive observer in this process.

Making Peace with Nature is a powerful, though often overly theoretical, analysis of the nature-culture-military dynamic at play in the DMZ. It offers a useful corrective to the twin narratives that the DMZ is either just an untouched zone of nature or an area to be exploited economically for the purposes of peaceful reunification. The DMZ is certainly a geographic and geopolitical anomaly that lends itself to high-flown rhetoric and ambitious plans. But it is also a real place that deserves the careful study that Kim has produced.

Copyright ©2024 Korean Quarterly. All rights reserved.

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