Cover of "Toy City"

Toy City is based on Lee Dong-Ha’s own childhood experiences in a refugee camp in Daegu, although Yun, the main character in the book, is transplanted from the countryside to a refuge camp on a hillside near Seoul. Lee was born in 1942 in Osaka, Japan and immigrated to North Gyeongsang province right after Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule. Lee Dong-Ha’s Toy City is an excellent evocation of childhood, regardless of location or country.

In the introduction, translator Chi-Young Kim notes that, “Toy City, while solidly placing the narrative in the political environment of the mid 1950s, just after the Korean War, and touching on sexual politics and class issues, refuses to make politics a central issue.” With main character Yun and his best friend Tae-gil engaging in the remarkable acts of imagination that make childhood a special time even in difficult circumstances. The lack of overt politicization or framing in the context of war and separation in this novel is stunning in comparison to many contemporary works of Korean fiction. This makes Toy City a most useful translation, because although the historical reality is in the story, it is allowed to be the background against which the more personal story of a boy coming of age, takes place. Frankly, to an English speaking general audience, this is likely to be a more compelling narrative than of the broader, but relatively unknown to the West, vicissitudes of Korean history.

The extent to which it does this is almost shocking. In the second sentence of the book, our fourth-grade narrator Yun says, “I believe the war had ended a year or two earlier.” A reader new to modern Korean literature might not understand how unusual that statement is, but the tone continues as, later, Yun discusses it fairly dismissively, “I didn’t really know how the war had swept through this city. The things I had seen thus far had been remaining scars” like the suddenly revealed scars on his father’s head. Even the event that precipitates Yun’s families’ ‘ostracism’ to the city, an ostracism which seems pretty obviously political, is downplayed. The closest Lee comes to describing the effects are when he notes, “As for my mother, she was leaving behind more relatives than any person who had left the village. Even so, not many people came out to see us off when we left. That was why my mother was furtively wiping tears from her eyes with the corner of her long cotton apron. Crouched beside me between the furniture, she couldn’t have looked smaller or more pitiful.”

This is not to say that politics are unimportant in Toy City, rather that they are invoked subtly. In one of his most brilliant characterizations, Lee paints a picture of the futility of becoming relentlessly locked into the pain of history. One of Yun’s neighbors is Mr. Ju, a carpenter of unusual skills who has left his first family across the 38th parallel. Mr. Ju is also a drunkard who, when violently enraged, terrorizes his family, completely obliterates his crude home, then cheerfully rebuilds it. Yun relates, “Ju’s strange drunken habits emerged when he finally arrived home. He would lock himself in. Then, the sound of his belongings being smashed to bits would leak out from behind the closed door.” The next day would be different, “With genuine amazement and envy, everyone watched the creation of a completely new and different living quarters from those of the day before, in the same limited space. For Ju, who had lost everything, his wooden box-like room might have been the only and the only toy granted to him.”

This is a clever take on at least two things – the rage of reliving the past and the Korean national obsession with destruction and rebuilding, both as a historical reality and Korea’s ongoing redevelopment strategy.

This is as obvious as Lee gets, and after the brilliance of his description here, even the most sceptical reader is likely to grant him the strategy. The plot is relatively simple, Yun’s family is banished to the city for the unspecified crimes of Yun’s uncle. Once Yun’s family arrives in the city, the story becomes a coming-of-age tale (In some ways similar to Oh Jun Hee’s Chinatown), beginning with Yun’s recognition that his father, by circumstance of banishment or by reality of Yun’s improved perception, is extremely imperfect. The father is incompetent: Yun remembers him as competent at farming, but in the city he is a failure. The father’s attempts to make a living by baking and selling muffins is an awful failure, which is exacerbated by the fact that the family, then has to eat the bitter tasting muffins until they are sick.

Like many young men, Yun alternately loves and is repulsed by his family. Certainly, when he gets a rare chance, to go work for a wealthy couple, he immediately decides living with his family is superior, but he loathes his sister for marrying up in social status and comes to despise his father’s bumbling. Yun goes through the struggles of young adolescence – there are some great descriptions of the alienation that young male teens experience – and family traumas beyond that described here.

The new edition of Toy City, by Lee Dong-ha and ably translated by Kim Chi-young, replaces an earlier, fragmentary translation done in the course of the Jimmoondang Portable Library of Korean Literature series. The new version is better both by virtue of its completeness (only one of the three chapters was translated in the previous version) and by the sparkle and verve of the translation.

Toy City reminds me, in some ways, of Park Wan-so’s Who Ate Up all the Shinga in that it tells a story redolent of Korean history and politics, but which focuses tightly on a family story that anyone can relate to. It’s a good book to pick up if you want to read a combination of cultural history and an incomplete coming of age story.

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Yun Dae-nyeong

Yun Dae-nyeong’s Between Heaven and Earth is a story of such tenuous plotting that it threatens to disintegrate as it is read. It begins with a disjointed introduction in which the narrator, using semi-rhetorical questions, directly addresses the reader as though the reader were questioning the narrator. In the course of doing so, the narrator answers one of the questions, “I don’t know why I followed her. I just followed her blindly, even though I didn’t know where she was heading.” Unfortunately, that could be a metaphor for the plot here, which doesn’t even bother to be driven by coincidence, instead random things, impulsively chosen, just happen. The narrator is completely unmoored, and the introduction ends with a paragraph that tries to bring it back, a matter-of-fact accounting of the place the narrator stands.

In the next chapter, we are flipped back to the start of the story. The narrator is on the way to pay respects to a dead aunt and bumps into (his shoulder into her stomach, somehow?) a woman who he quickly identifies as marked with death, although it later turns out to be that she is marked by betrayal. On this premise, he follows her from Gwangju to Wando, and then walks behind her for an hour and a half to an inn. By this time a reader is completely aware of Yun’s clunky obsession with the color ‘milky’ white, which stands for (contrary to the commentary on the back of the book) death. The narrator has elliptical conversations with the innkeeper, full of ellipses, hops and vague portents that never seem to add up to much or come to conclusion. It is in one of these conversations that the innkeeper gives the book its name when he asks the non-sequitur question, “Is there any trace left when a man goes in between heaven and earth?” It is all intended to be very mysterious, but instead comes across as silly and insubstantial.

Both the narrator and innkeeper are convinced the woman is suicidal, and throughout the narrator keeps claiming the woman had intentionally drawn him with her. When, finally, a suicide does come, it is random and unrelated to the story. Then the woman crawls in his bed. Then she reveals she has been betrayed in love. Then they have sex. Then she leaves after telling him she had been planning to commit suicide because she was 4 months pregnant by a man that left her. She says this sex will erase her past life and give her reason to live. Then she leaves. Then he leaves. There are a few more plot twists explained by the innkeeper. Then the man leaves.

It is all so random that it became a chore to read, as it was clear that there would be no destination, and the journey wasn’t worth reporting on. I should note two possibilities that might explain this without putting any blame on the author or story:

1) It is quite possible this is a book that is impossible to translate accurately and so delicacy in Hangul is replaced by obscuration and attenuation in English
2) This is a genre for which there is no equivalent in English writing (Like the “seasonal bucolic” and “pundan munhak,” both of which seem quite popular in Korean, but don’t have a place to land in English.

There are slight translation problems, sentences that contain multiple thoughts (though, to be fair, this can be a feature of Korean writing) and odd word choices and structures:

My mother had gone to pay our respects. This would have been considered acceptable, even though I myself did not go but when I thought of my aunt I felt it was not really true.

I’m guessing the narrator is saying here that it is not true that his absence would be “considered acceptable?” That doesn’t entirely make sense, since he says it would have been acceptable. He also goes immediately on to say that he goes to the funeral because of past consideration of the In any case, the construction of the sentence is quite awkward and it obscures meaning.

Or

“I stopped opening the rear door of the taxi, and as if someone grabbed me by my collar, I retreated hesitantly.”

Which seem to be from two entirely different physical encounters. It is always possible, of course, that this is a “faithful” translation. If so, this is one of those books for which a small bit of betrayal might have been a tonic.

With its gossamer story, intentional lacunae, and plotless-ness, Between Heaven and Earth is not redeemed by its often labored use of color as a symbol, or its occasional well-turned phrase. This is one of the few Jimoondang non-pundan munhak publications that I really can’t recommend.

A nice Installation/Interaction Piece

With a catalog featuring two new short stories by Kim Young-ha, it is clear that he was somehow in the minds of the organizers of Media City Seoul’s  “Trust” Exhibition.

I had a chance to talk with the organizers, and it turns out that  he was not only on their minds, but also an inspiration for the exhibition.  This makes a certain amount of sense, as the theme of “Trust” zig-zags through “Your Republic is Calling You.”

I interviewed the curator, a video I hope to have up tomorrow, and she was quite clear that Kim was on their minds.

The two new stories are Head (which is not dirty!), a story about trust and lack of trust that pulls it off in less than one page. The other story is Promise, which also, and in amusing detail, discusses trust in public and private.

You may have to visit the exhibition to read these (I’m going to ask if I can link them), as they may not be printed beyond the catalog. We shall see… In any case, the kickoff of the event is described below.

The opening event for Media City Seoul’s 6^th Biennial exhibition, this year called “Trust,” is at 5pm on Monday the 6^th at the Seoul Museum of Art.

I had a chance to visit the exhibit during its sneak-preview on Saturday, and it is an art exhibit worth seeing. Focusing on art in modern media – often video art, but also presentation, photo, and performance arts – the exhibition examines the duality of trust, particularly in a modern and increasingly technologized world.

The opening event will feature an exclusive music performance by Tarek Atoui (which promises to be dramatic and loud, if the rehearsals were any example) in front of the Seoul Museum of Art.

One of the truly exciting pieces at the exhibition is the Blast Theory’s audience-performance piece Ulrike and Eamon Compliant. The piece is a sound work that walks audience members through the direct surroundings of SeMA while giving directions and asking questions of the audience member. The piece has a great ending, and I urge anyone who attends to NOT be scared by the fact that they are being asked to participate.

The exhibition catalog is extensive, and contains two new short fictions by Kim Young-ha, which were commissioned for the event.

Browsers interested in following learning more about the exhibition can keep in touch online:
webpage: http://www.mediacityseoul.org
blog page: http://trustseoul.worpdress.com
twitter account: http://twitter.com/mediacityseoulE
flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mediacityseoul/sets/

Dates: Through November 17^th
Times: Tuesday – Sunday, 10.00 am – 9.00 pm, Weekends & Holidays, 10.00 am – 7.00 pm, closed on Mondays.
Location: Seoul Museum of Modern Art, Simpson Memorial Hall of EWHA Girls High School, Gyenghuigung Annex of SeMA, Seoul Museum of History (All in or around City Hall)
Admission: Adults W3,000, Students/Soldiers W2,000, Under 18/Senior FREE

Yi

Some mysterious how Yi Kwang-su, who wrote “The Heartless” and had more changes in philosophy than one man should conveniently be able to stand, was not on the Wikipedia. He is now, and  you can check it out here...

It looks a little like this:

Life

Famous (among other things) for writing Heartless the “first Korean novel,”^[1] Yi Kwangsu was born Yi Bogyeong on February 1, 1982.^[2] Yi was orphaned at about age 10 and grew up with Donghak believers. In 1904, around the time of the Donghak Peasant Revolution, he moves to Seoul in order to avoid the authorities. In 1905 he went to Japan for his education. Upon returning to Korea in 1913, he taught, in Jeongju, at Osan School. In 1915 he returned to Japan again to study Philosophy at Waseda University. In 1919 he moved to Shanghai and served in the Korean Provisional Government and became president of The Independent, a newspaper in Shanghai. Yi returned to Korea in 1921 and founded the Alliance for Self-Improvement, established on principles of enlightenment and self-help. From 1923 to 1934, Yi pursued a career in journalism working for several newspapers, including two that survive today, the Dong-a Ilbo and the Chosun Ilbo.In 1937 he was jailed for cultural activities subversive to the colonial (Japanese) government, but by 1939 he reversed his nationalism, adopted the Japanese name of Kayama Misturo^[3] and enthusiastically assumed pro-Japanese stances and activities. After the war, the Special Committee for the Investigation of Anti-nationalist Activities found Yi guilty of collaboration. In 1950 Yi was captured by the North Korean army and died in Manpo on October 25th, most likely of tuberculosis.^[4]

Work

Yi was a fiction writer and essayist. His essays originally focused on the need for national consciousness.^[5] His fiction was among the first modern fiction in Korea and he is most famous for his novel, The Heartless. The Heartless was a description of the crossroads at which Korea found itself, stranded between tradition and modernity and undergoing conflict between social realities and traditional ideals.^[6] His career can be split into thirds. The first period (That of The Heartless), from 1910-19 featured a strong attack on Korea’s traditional society and the belief that Korea should adopt a more modern (“western”) worldview.^[7] From the early 20s to the 30′s Yi transformed into a dedicated nationalist and published a controversial essay, “On the Remaking of National Consciousness” which advocated a moral overhaul of Korea and blames Koreans for being defeatist.^[8] The third period, from the 30′s on, coincides with Yi’s conversion to Buddhism and his work consequently becomes quite Buddhist in tone. This was also the period in which, as noted above, Yi became a Japanese collaborator.

Yi’s professional judgment could be as fickle as his politics. In one famous case he befriended then abandoned Korean “New Woman” writer Kim Myongsun, arguably because his own beliefs about modernism had shifted.^[9]

Works in English

Mujong (The Heartless)

Works in Korean (Partial)

Mujong (The Heartless)
Dosan, An Chango
Stone Pillow (Essays)

Koh notes the Confucian history of Korea which historically excluded women from the public sphere including education and economic participation. Women were taught, at least to read, but this was so they could learn from homiletic biographies and books of proper conduct. At that time, female writing was more or less restricted to poetry and observations, which women shared primarily among themselves. The poems were kyubang kasa (lyrical verse of the inner room). Kisaeng (something like courtesans) were also literate, but this was purely in the service of entertaining men.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries there were rare examples of female writers, but they were so rare as to be remarkable. Lady Hyegyong, who  recorded the sad events of her royal life, was one of these notable female writers. Although she did not write fiction per se, her writings were chosen and molded to transmit Confucian moral principles (LOL – so, perhaps in one way they were fictional).

The Chosun dynasty began to collapse under its own weight at the end of the 19th century, and this opened up more opportunities, including some for women. The “New Woman” appeared and her education, if nothing else, marked her as distinct from females of the previous eras. Koh notes that the fictional “New Woman” was of much more interest to Korean society than actual examples, and the first three “New Women” were treated rather poorly by society. Koh does not mention it, but Na Hyesok, Kim Wonju, and Kim Myongsun were all coincidentally born in 1896 and were all also  at least partially educated in Japan. What Koh does do is clearly and briefly trace the tragic endings of all  three of these writers. Kim Myongsun was initially a success, she was befriended and then abandoned by Yi Kwangsu, who seems to have made a habit of this kind of betrayal (noted here and here) – she died broke in a mental institution. Na Hyesok, made the mistake of being a public advocate  of free love (in words and deeds) and was divorced by her husband – she died broke in a charity ward. Kim Wonju, at least, found a better escape, becoming a Buddhist nun after her career also came apart  under the twin stresses of her fiction and her scandalous personal life.

Interesting, but not surprising, that even in the era of the “New Woman” the essentially Confucian Korean society easily brought these three pioneers to their knees.

Koh concludes with a brief canvas of two of the indispensable writers of what she calls “the industrial age.” These are Pak Kyong-ni (Land – Toji) and Pak Wanso (in another of her Romanized disguises).  The latter section is interesting enough, but it is Koh’s discussion of the “New Women” in such concise form that makes this article one worth reading for fans of Korean fiction as well as fans of the history of female writers.

http://www.koreasociety.org/download_document/352_women_and_korean_literature_by_helen_koh.html

This will be a totally cool thing to see for other books..

I wonder who thought this one up and how long it will be before Amazon.com will show them? ^^
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\”Your Republic is Calling You

The book!

Pointed out to me by the redoubtable James from The Grand Narrative, The University of Hawaii Press has put out a book. The latest title in the Center for Korean Studies book series is Soldiers on the Cultural Front. In this case, the soldiers are literary.

The article describes:

The book examines the 1945-1960 formative period in North Korean literature, a period that saw a gradual transformation from the initial “Soviet era” to a Korean version of “national Stalinism.”

Kind of interesting how that “national” sneaks in there, as it always seems to do with Korean (South or North) literature – the equivalent in the South being the “national literature” (sometimes contrasted to “class literature” in the South, but in a different venue, I would argue that both were clearly national).

Anyway, at $49 it’s a tad expensive for anyone but a literature freak, but it can be had here at Amazon.

Kim Dong-in (김동

Kim Dong-in now has a lovely big page here at the Wikipedia

Life

Kim Dong-in, born on October 2, 1900 in Pyeongyang, Pyeongannam-do was a pioneer of realism and naturalism in Modern Korean literature. A son of a wealthy landowner, like many other young Korean intellectuals Kim took his higher education in Japan, attending the Meiji Academy in Tokyo and entering the Kawabata School of Fine Arts. Kim dropped out when he decided to pursue writing as a career^[1]. In Japan in 1919, Kim and other advocates for “art-for-art’s-sake-literature,” launched the influential but transitory journal Creation (Changjo) along with Joo Yohan, Jeon Yeongtaek, Choi Seungman, and Kim Hwan^[2]. Creation took a stand against the didactic literature (“national literature” to put it another way) proposed by Yi Kwang-su^[3], In Creation Kim published his debut story, “The Sorrows of the Weak” (Yakhanjaui seulpeum).

Kim lived an extravagant lifestyle (based on the inheritance received from his father) until 1930, at which point his finances began to fail. Kim’s financial situation led him to depression and drug abuse^[4]. Until this point Kim had been a purist (colloquial and realistic)^[5] but he now turned to popular serials, which he had previously spurned. Among these were a number of historical novels (listed below). In 1934, Kim published, somewhat ironically considering their different stances on literature, the first in-depth study of Yi Gwang-su, “A Study of Chunwon” (Chunwon yeongu); in 1935, Kim launched the monthly magazine Yadam^[6].

In 1939, still poor and now ill, Kim joined Park Yong-hui, Lim Hak-su and others in a visit to Manchuria that was sponsored by the Consolation of the North Chinese Imperial Army. This was clearly an act of collaboration and is regarded, even today in Korea, as a mark on his literary career^[7]. In 1942, however, Kim was jailed on charges of lese-majesty against the Emperor of Japan^[8].

In 1946, after Korean liberation, Kim was critical in forming the Pan-Korea Writers Association which countered other organizations promoting proletarian literature^[9].

In the years that followed, Kim published stories, including “The Traitor” (Banyeokja, 1946) and “Man Without a Nation” (Manggugingi, 1947). These works, ironically, provided a sharp critique of Lee Gwang-su and other writers who collaborated with the Japanese during the occupation^[10]. On January 5th, 1951, Kim died at his home in Seoul.

In 1955, the magazine World of Thoughts (Sasanggye) created the Dong-in Literature Prize to commemorate Kim’s literary achievements^[11].

Work

Works in English

Potatoes in Modern Korean Fiction: An Anthology
The Rock in Meetings and Farewells: Modern Korean Stories
The Post Horse in Meetings and Farewells: Modern Korean Stories
The Red Hills: A Doctor’s Diary in Modern Korean Short Stories
The Seaman’s Chant in The Rainy Spell and Other Korean Stories
The Photograph and the Letter in A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction

Works in Korean (Partial)

Historical Novels:
The Young Ones (Jeolmeun geudeul, 1930-1931)
Spring at Unhyeongung Palace (Unhyeongungui bom, 1933)
The Decline of the Dynasty (Wangbuui nakjo, 1935)
Great Prince Suyang (Dae Suyang, 1941)

Collections:
Life (Moksum, 1924)
Potato (1935)
Short Stories of Kim Dong-in (Kim Dong-in danpyeonjip, 1939)
The Sunset of the Palace (1941)
Roaming (Baehoe, 1941)
Identical Toes (Balgaragi dalmatda, 1948)

References

External links

RASKB back in the house!

LOL.. I guess the Royal Asiatic Society (Korean Branch) upgraded so thoroughly that they tossed out their mailing list.

Because I did NOT get the news that they had a brand new and spiffy website as well as the fact that their library is now open again. That’s a win!

The website is very attractive and reasonably informative (and works in Firefox).

Props to RASKB.

A little complaint the pages are in English, but the map to the library is in Korean (no sweat there) but it has NO references to subway stations. It also has no directions, which means a man with old eyes (say, me?) has a bit of trouble sorting its location out.

I mean.. if there is one easy way to find places in Seoul? For now I’ll have to find the Seoul Park Hospital and hope it’s map is better.

Ah.. I’m whining.

As soon as I return from Thailand I will be hieing myself hence to the library.

RASKB is completely back in business!