It features a young Park herself, holding the “singa” mentioned in the title of her best known (in English) work, Who Ate Up All the Singa? It looks like this:

Park Wan-suh is definitely worth checking out, which you can do here on KTLIT.

For the purposes of the Wikipedia Project I also have the Who’s Who in Korean Literature (published by the Korean Culture & Arts Foundation), a vast tome of some 55o pages, containing biographies of 181 writers. Published in 1996 the book says the the publisher’s mission (partly) is:

Contribution to the creation of cultural environment of the future society that is rich and abundant as well as to the international cultural exchange.

Which is why I found it odd that of the 10 authors represented in Questioning Minds, only two were in the Who’s Who. Park Wan-suh made the cut, and so did Ch’oe Yun. But of course these two were unavoidable.

Authors who did not make the cut include: Kim Myong-sun and Na Hye-sok, two artists whose lives were essentially destroyed for their lack of conventionality; Kim Won-ju, whose views on sexuality were so unpopular that she eventually retreated to a Buddhist temple; Han Mu-sook, who is famous in Korean and internationally; Kang Sin-jae, whose official involvement with the Korean literary establishment was vast (e.g. she won the Korea Republic Academy of Arts Award in 1988 and was a representative  of the Association of Korean Writers); Song Won-hui (just exactly repeat the qualifications I listed for Kang Sin-jae); Yi Sun (whose tragic early memory loss had the unfortunate effect of removing her from the public eye), and; Yi Sok-pong, who won the Korean PEN Literature Award in 1989).

That is a rather remarkable list of writers to have missed, both trailblazers and accomplished artists, all publicly recognized well before publication of the Who’s Who. More remarkably, out of those 181 important writers in the Who’s Who, only 15 are women (the writers are conveniently categorized as M or F on the header of each biography). This is an astoundingly low percentage (I pulled out all my maths skills^^ and calculated it as less than 10%), and leads me to suspiciously ask if there is a bias here.

Some notes of warning to myself  -

• It is quite possible that there have been more male writers than female writers in the modern era, certainly the lives of Na and Kim Myong-sun would have scared off all but the hardiest potential writer.
• The inclusion of poets in this list might also swing the balance towards men (I have no idea what the ratio of male to female poets might actually be)
• The situation I am describing is also quite prevalent on the English side of literature

But still – it’s a remarkable list of omissions and a remarkable percentage of men in the final tally. I think it’s time to put out another one of these books and try to represent the actual, and increasing, diversity of Korean authors. In fact, of course it is time to do this.. I also note that Shin Kyung-sook (F) and Kim Young-ha (M) are not represented in the book.

Finally, kudos to LTI Korea and other translators, who have ALWAYS seemed to translate a higher percentage of female authors than the gatekeepers of the canon seem willing to admit.

While I express my preferences between the books, it is worth considering that while some are better than others, for a little over $100 dollars these 25 volumes are  a very nice overview of modern Korean literature. This is partially a credit to LTI Korea / Jimoondang cleverly choosing author-based and novella-length books. This allows a lot of territory to be covered in a way that more formal “collections” can’t achieve.

With that said, and in order of publication, here are the books.

1. The Wings, by Yi Sang
   An absolutely necessary read by the spiritual predecessor to post-modern Korean writers, this short story hints at the disconnection caused by Japanese colonialism. Also includes the excellent short stories Encounters and Departures and Deathly Child.
2. A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball, by Cho Se-hui
   An absolutely necessary read detailing the human cost of Korea’s “miracle on the Han.” The longer version, The Dwarf, is even better.
3. The Cry of the Magpies, by Kim Dong-ni
   A  fair story of trauma caused by civil war. Also includes the short story Deungsin-bul.
4. The Wounded, by Yi Chongjun
   A good, but complicated, evocation of the trauma caused by civil war. Also includes An Assailant’s Face.
5. Deep Blue Night, by Choi In-ho
   An interesting story of Korean expatriates in California embarking on a road trip, and a journey through their own pasts.
6. The Ma Rok Biographies, by Seo Giwon
   Amusing but inconsequential stories of characters linked by name.
7. The Land of the Banished, by Cho Chong-Rae
   An absolutely necessary read. One of the best pundan munhak stories – Cho uses a bit of misdirection at the start of the story to add real flesh to a real villain.
8. Three Days in That Autumn, by Park Wan-suh
   A good but lesser work from a great author.
9. The Rainy Spell, by Yun Heung-gil
   A good but minor work that is more important to Koreans than it could ever be to overseas readers.
10. The Other Side of Dark Remembrance, by Lee Kyun-young
    An absolutely necessary read that neatly manages to describe a very modern Korea, but still tie it back to its tragic history.
    
11. With Her Oil Lamp on, That Night, by Lim Chul-Woo
    Decent, but obvious and a bit dated (even considering that it is from a particular historical era)
12. Between Heaven and Earth, by Yun Daenyoung
    One of the vaguest and least focused of the series
13. An Appointment with My Brother, by Yi Mun-Yol
    A good but lesser work from a brilliant author. This is a political lecture wrapped in a book (a new translation is due in Spring, from Azalea Press). There are far better books by Yi available online.
14. The Camellias, by Kim Yu-Jeong
    An absolutely necessary read set of stories about love. The Camellias is comic and light, The Scorching Heat is tragic, and A Wanderer in the Valley is hopeful, if cautious.
15. Rust, by Yang Gui-ja
    Two good but minor works (the second is Swamp) by a really great author
16. House of Idols, by Choi In-hoon
    A good but minor work.
17. My Innocent Uncle, by Ch’ae Man-shik
    An absolutely necessary read if just for the title story, which is a clever political satire. Also includes A Ready Made Life, which while a bit obvious is a Korean classic. Once Upon a Paddy is a one-note satire. partly because it is trying to make a difficult point.
18. Photo Shop Murder, by Kim Young-ha
    An absolutely necessary read which is one of only two books in the series (mainly due to when the series was published) hinting at some directions in post-modern Korean fiction. Both Photo Shop Murder and Whatever Happened to the Guy in the Elevator are brutally modern, and the latter is laugh-out-loud funny.
19. The Chronicle of Manchwidang, by Kim Moon Soo
    A  quite good story, and amusing. Situational comedy mixed with unfortunate situations engendered by Korean economic development.
20. A Toy City, by Lee Dong-ha
    A  good story, rendered minor by a much more complete version published later.
21. The Last of Hanako, by Ch’oe Yun
    An absolutely necessary read that lays bare the pressure for social conformity in Korea. Basically, anything Ch’oe writes is worth reading.
22. Chinatown, by Oh Jung Hee
    An interesting coming-of-age story, allied to a kind of “wheel of life” narrative that I found completely charming, if occasionally bleak. The other two stories, Wayfarer and The Release are also sharply told.
23. A Man, by Hwang Soon-won
    An adequate book. The title story has remarkably crass sexual politics and is difficult to read. The first story, The Dog of Crossover Village, remains opaque to me, though man other like it. Bibari is an interesting story of Jeju life. If you like this, be sure to chase down “Lost Souls” which has much more of his work, and better.
24. Human Decency, by Gong Ji young
    In competition with Between Heaven and Earth for least important in the series. Too obvious.
25. Hong Gildong, by Seo Hajin
    A light but entertaining semi-retelling of a Korean myth, it is paired with another re-telling of Korean myth, The Woodcutter and the Nymph. Like Kim Young-ha, a very modern writer.

So there you have it.. a clever collection of 26 novellas containing the work of some of the greatest writers of Korean modern fiction.

Waxen Wings

Waxen Wings: The Acta Korean Anthology of Short Fiction from Korea, edited by Bruce Fulton, is a  breakthrough in the translation and publishing of Korean short stories into English. It is the first collection of such stories that I have read in which it seemed that the criteria for choosing works included a simple analysis of whether or not the works would be enjoyable an comprehensible to Western readers who have little innate understanding of Korea or her culture. The beauty of choosing such stories is that they will draw readers in and, with sugar and not medicine, introduce them to Korean culture in general. In fact this volume is so easy to read that parsing it suggests that yet another step might be taken in translation, and that is to divide the “modern” era of Korean literature into thirds. This need is highlighted by the fact (and I NEVER thought I’d say this) that the book somewhat skips over the colonial and division periods, which I think is a good thing in total.

Waxen Wings covers the two canonical realms of Korean modern fiction although it only briefly explicitly introduces readers to the Japanese Colonial period (here defined as from 1910 to 1945) in two short stories. The first is In The Mountains, by Yi Hyo-seok the colonial importance of which is explained in a brief explanatory note which notes that the naturalist tone of the work was forced by Japanese; Yi originally wrote political works, but the Japanese colonialists suppressed the proletarian literature movement in Korea, forcing authors to less controversial subjects. In any case the story follows a man forced out of the city to the bliss he discovers in the countryside. The second work, and more traditional colonial work, is Constable Maeng by Ch’ae Man-sik. Man-sik was an author with wide skills, from the political yet funny My Innocent Uncle to the coming of age novel, Chinatown. In Constable Maeng Ch’ae, through the eyes of a constable, gives a snapshot of Korean history just after the Japanese colonization has ended. As serious work written in a light-hearted tone (just check out the constables’ definition of what it means to be a non-corrupt policeman!), it is marred only by a rather didactic final paragraph, the hammering of which destroys some of the light tone that has preceded it.

The collection changes gears here, with the allegorical Weaver Woman by O Chong-hui. Like Ch’ae, Oh has written a well-respected novel named Chinatown, though hers featured the coming of age of a female protagonist, and her short story The Bronze Mirror is included in a previous collection, The Land of Exile. Weaver Women is a meditation on barrenness in a neo-Confucian country, a meditation that is well-served by the stories’ fractured but calm structure. In many ways this is an ‘era-less’ piece as its lessons can be applied to any era of Korean history or society.

Next up, and stepping toward pundan munhak (separation literature of the civil war and post civil war era, is the redoubtable, and unfortunately recently deceased, Park Wan-suh and her We Sell Shame. Park was and is a Korean treasure, who has been extensively translated into English. From her recent “autobiographical novel  Who Ate Up All the Shinga to a raft (relatively speaking) of translated short stories including In the Realm of the Buddha from the collection Red Room, Park never fails to deliver. In We Sell Shame Park combines the two themes of her authorial life, the cost of the Korean Civil War and separation with family relationships in the new economy, to which she adds a look at social life in general, and ends with a scathing attack on hagwons and cram schools, which is really a scathing attack on a society that has become obsessed with status. All this in a very few pages, three marriages, and a re-union of “friends.”

Kim Won-il’s Prison of the Heart is the longest work in the collection and directly focuses on post-war splits in Korea; it is also a complex story of semi-redemption. The narrator, a student rebel in 1960, returns to Korea as his brother, still a political rebel and under arrest because of it, begins to fail and die. Kim interlaces a variety of “then and now” scenes, which show how characters have developed and changed. There is a highly amusing scene in which the narrator and an old friend discuss the current (the story takes place in 1989) unrest and the friends bemoans that today’s protestors won’t wait until yesterday’s protesters are making over 10,000 per year. Using a series of flashbacks, Kim portrays the strength of his mother in the post-colonial and civil war periods – this is a strength that is sapped by the impending death of her political son. The story contrasts bible versus socialism, youth versus age, dreams versus reality. There are lots of big ideas in this story, but Kim manages to herd them all, by placing them firmly within the lives of his characters. At the end a reader can’t help but sympathize as the narrator relives his past, and in a small and personal way, returns to glories and brotherhood of his past.

In the last third of the book, Fulton moves to what might be called “modern modern” fiction. The final four stories would be right at home in any collection of modern fiction, even though the stories are quite different from each other.

Kim Young-ha’s The Pager is an amusing and sad story of a nondescript, nearly sad-sack man who, after his fiancée leaves him for a new man and education overseas, makes a bold, amusing and completely out of his normal comfort zone move on a woman he meets in the subway. This woman, he feels, is more his type. Over the next few days Kim follows the lives of both characters as the “will they meet? won’t they meet?” tension begins to build towards a climax. Kim ends with a neat reveal that quite surprised me, and then ties the story together with one last little flourish.

Corpses,by Pyeon Hye-yeong, is a combination whodunit/horror story that works its way right under the skin of a reader. An extremely uncertain narrator is repeatedly being called out of work to identify various body parts that might belong to his wife; a wife who drowned most mysteriously while on vacation with the narrator. As the story continues, reader and narrator seem pulled down by the same aquatic suction, and the end is appropriately water-logged and creepy.

The Glass Shield by Kim Chung-yeok is creepy in its own way. It begins as a lark – a tale of two inseparable friends who prank the art world and society. By complete accident the hapless two become famous performance artists. As the story concludes, however, it becomes something different; a meditation on friendship and separation. These two disparate sections are well melded together, and while the conclusion of the story may be a bit of a downer, it still rings with truth.

I’ve saved the title story for last review, because it is the most powerful story in the book (I think Professor Fulton agrees, as it is the title story). Waxen Wings by Ha Seong-nan is a powerful fable with obvious references to the fable of Icarus in its title. Waxen Wings can be read in many ways: it can be seen as a fable of over-reaching, like Icarus, its predecessor; it can be read to mean that you should be careful what you want, for achieving it might come in forms you don’t expect; it can be read to demonstrate that even the most noble goals can have unexpected and sometimes tragic outcomes; it can be read to mean that your goals should be reasonable, in fact; it can be read in all these ways and no doubt more. Told in short sentences and flashbacks, it begins with the present, “Your watch says 3:14,” and then quickly cuts back to childhood memory, “This is very dangerous. Who started this?” Waxen Wings follows a nameless narrator through her quest to defy gravity, ignoring the obvious signs of danger that she passes on the way.

The conclusion is unexpected and poignant and one of the beauties of this story is that no matter how you read its ‘moral,’ that reading will apply, nearly seamlessly, to Korean history. It is another of the beauties of this story that most of use will also recognize its moral (whichever one they take) somewhere in the lives. A revelation of a short story, Waxen Wings makes me hope that somewhere in this world a skilled translator is busy working away on Ha’s other stories.

A note about the introduction is also in order. In just over nine pages, Fulton manages to neatly outline the history of Korean modern literature in a way that should make it accessible to the new reader. The introduction is worth reading on its own merits. I should also note that the translators and translations are varied, but all quite good. As a final bonus, at the back of the book, Fulton includes and English bibliography of each included author.

A Fanciful Venn Diagram: Who Likes What?

The last point I would make is that reading this collection also made me very aware of how different the fiction is by era. This thought made me wonder if, by now, we are not trying to translate too many kinds of “modern” Korean fiction into one volume, and whether it might not be useful to separate “modern” Korean fiction into three segments. After all, with Waxen Wings, Land of Exile, and Modern Korean Fiction, we seem to have the overview covered.

This was a really fun book to read and there are very few volumes of translated Korean literature about which that can be said. Fulton should be praised for going outside of the canon for themes, even if he did rely upon familiar authors, at least in the first few stories. In addition, I think these are all NEW translations and so Fulton avoids the ongoing problem of re-presenting stories considered canonical within Korean culture. In the past, when asked what to recommend for beginners at Korean literature I have, with some reservations, recommended Land of Exile, or Modern Korean Fiction: An Anthology, sometimes even suggesting a complete reading of the KLTI/Jimoondang Korean Library of Translated Literature.

All of these are noble collections and good works, but Waxen Wings immediately replaces them as the introduction to Korean translated literature.

Great job all around.

I was a bit fuzzy and babbled on a little bit.

PakWanSuh

Park Wan-so

This is an ongoing list, based on an original list in the online Bibliography of Asian Studies of the Association for Asian Studies. I have added stories from three new books (Weathered Blossom, A Sketch of the Fading Son, and The Red Room) and look forward to any additions anyone can send me.

TRANSLATIONS OF STORIES BY PAK WAN-SO

A Sketch of a Fading Sun
Park Wan-suh
In: Sketch of the Fading Sun
Hyun-jae Yee Sallee (Editor), He-ran Park (Introduction)
White Pine Press (July 15, 1999)

Butterfly illusion
Park, Wan-so; Kim, Sul-ja, tr.
Korean Literature Today (Seoul) 3, no.4 (Win 1998) 156-189
ISSN: 1229-6767

Butterfly of illusion
Pak, Wanso; Ryu, Youngju, tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 26-61

A certain barbarity
Pak, Wanso; Chun, Kyung-Ja, tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 111-122

Ciuciubabka
Pak, Wanso; Rurarz, Joanna P., tr.
Przeglad Orientalistyczny (Warsaw) nos.1-2 (whole nos.196-197) (2001) 63-69
ISSN: 0033-2283

Dried flowers
Pak, Wan-So; Kim, Yung-Hee, tr.
Korean Literature Today (Seoul) 4, no.4 (Win 1999) 63-93
ISSN: 1229-6767

During Three Days of Autumn
Park Wan-suh
In: Sketch of the Fading Sun
Hyun-jae Yee Sallee (Editor), He-ran Park (Introduction)
White Pine Press (July 15, 1999)

Encounter at the airport
Pak, Wanso; Frankl, John M., tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 123-142

Encounter at the airport
Park, Wan-suh; Frankl, John M., tr.
Koreana (Seoul) 24, no.2 (Sum 2010) 90-99
ISSN: 1016-0744

Title: Farewell at Kimpo Airport
Pak, Wanso; Frankl, John M., tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 62-79

Granny flowers in those heartless days
Pak, Wanso; Ryu, Youngju, tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 143-155

Title: In The Realm of the Buddha
In: The Red Room: Stories of Trauma in Contemporary Korea (Modern Korean Fiction) by Bruce Fulton, Ju-Chan Fulton, and Bruce Cumings
University of Hawaii Press (September 2009)
Not sure of the pages as my book is at work. ^^
Korzenie mojej tworczosci
Pak, Wanso; Ogarek-Czoj, Halina, tr.
Przeglad Orientalistyczny (Warsaw) nos.3-4 (whole nos.187-188) (1998) 219-226
ISSN: 0033-2283

Misty rain, departing rain (Kanun pi, isulbi) by Pak Wan-So
Pak, Wan-So; Choi, Don Mee, tr.
Citation: Acta Koreana (Daegu, Korea) 7, no.2 (Jul 2004) 147-162
ISSN: 1520-7412

Momma’s Stake Part I
Park Wan-suh
In: Sketch of the Fading Sun
Hyun-jae Yee Sallee (Editor), He-ran Park (Introduction)
White Pine Press (July 15, 1999)

Momma’s Stake Part II
Park Wan-suh
In: Sketch of the Fading Sun
Hyun-jae Yee Sallee (Editor), He-ran Park (Introduction)
White Pine Press (July 15, 1999)

Momma’s Stake Part III
Park Wan-suh
In: Sketch of the Fading Sun
Hyun-jae Yee Sallee (Editor), He-ran Park (Introduction)
White Pine Press (July 15, 1999)

Mother’s hitching post II (Omma-ui malttuk 2)
Pak, Wanso; Kim, Miza, tr.
Korea Journal (Seoul) 39, no.2 (Sum 1999) 343-366
ISSN: 0023-3900

Mr. Hong’s medals
Pak, Wanso; Chun, Kyung-Ja, tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 80-96

My very last possession, and other stories
Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs.
Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999 xiii, 220p.
(An East Gate book)

My very last possession
Pak, Wanso; Chun, Kyung-Ja, tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 198-220

The naked tree
Pak, Wan-So; Yu, Young-nan, tr.
Korean Literature Today (Seoul) 2, no.1 (Apr 1997) 146-196
ISSN: 1229-6767

A pasque-flower on that bleak day
Park, Wan-so
In: Suh, Ji-Moon, ed. The rainy spell and other Korean stories. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe; Seoul: UNESCO, 1998. (An East gate book) 204-212

A Poverty That is Stolen
Park Wan-suh
In: Sketch of the Fading Sun
Hyun-jae Yee Sallee (Editor), He-ran Park (Introduction)
White Pine Press (July 15, 1999)

She knows, I know, and heaven knows
Pak, Wanso; Chun, Kyung-Ja, tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 3-25

Three days in that autumn
Pak, Wanso; Ryu, Sukhee, tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 156-197

Thus ended my days of watching over the house
Pak, Wanso; Epstein, Stephen J., tr.
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) 97-110

‘We Teach Shame’ and ‘Invitation’; with an introduction by Bruce Fulton [short stories]
Pak, Wanso; Kim, Teresa; Lee, Jessica Ji Eun, trs.
Citation: Acta Koreana (Daegu, Korea) 10, no.2 (Jul 2007) 121-148
ISSN: 1520-7412

Weathered Blossom
Julie Hwang (Illustrator)
Hollym International Corporation; Bilingual edition (May 30, 2006)
ISBN-10: 1565912225

Winter outing [Kyoul naduri, 1975]
Pak, Wanso; Pihl, Marshall R., tr.
In: Pihl, Marshall R.; Fulton, Bruce; Fulton, Ju-Chan, trs. and eds. Land of exile: contemporary Korean fiction. Expanded edition. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 2007. 132-144

LITERARY CRITICISM ABOUT PAK WAN-SO

Choi, Kyeong-Hee
Neither colonial nor national: the making of the ‘new woman’ in Pak Wanso’s ‘Mother’s Stake 1′
In: Shin, Gi-Wook; Robinson, Michael, eds. Colonial modernity in Korea. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999. (Harvard East Asian monographs, 184) (Harvard-Hollym series on Korean studies) 221-247

Chun, Kyung-Ja
Title: Introduction
In: Pak, Wanso [author]; Chun, Kyung-Ja, et al., trs. My very last possession, and other stories. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. (An East Gate book) vii-xiii

Epstein, Stephen
“Gender, Politics, and the Household in the Stories of Pak Wan-sô,” Asian
Studies Institute Working Paper 5 (1998), 19pp.

Hinds, Diana
Pak Wanso
In: Mostow, Joshua S., et al., eds. The Columbia companion to modern East Asian literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 704-706

Jeon, Miseli
Memory and literature [on two short stories; 'Sanbiki no Kani' by Oba Minako and 'Kyoul naduri' by Pak Wan-so]
In: Brown, Janice; Arntzen, Sonja, eds. Across time and gender: reading and writing women’s texts. Conference proceedings, University of Alberta. Edmonton: Department of East Asian Studies, University of Alberta, 2002. p. 138-143

Park, Hye-kyung
Park Wan-suh: a woman’s story of the Korean War
Koreana (Seoul) 24, no.2 (Sum 2010) 87-89
ISSN: 1016-0744

Shim, Jung-Soon
The Confucian difference: yin/yang feminism in Korean women’s dramas [analysis of plays by Jung Bock-keun, Park Wan-so, and Lee Ju-sil]
Theatre Research International (Oxford, England) 24, no.3 (Aut 1999) 241-246
ISSN: 0307-8833

Suh, Ji-moon, comp.
The Korean War in the lives and thoughts of several major Korean writers [based on videotaped interviews with Pak Wan-so, Yun Heung-gil, Yi Mun-yol, Kim Won-il, Hong Song-won, and Richard Kim]
In: West, Philip; Suh, Ji-moon, eds. Remembering the ‘forgotten war’: the Korean War through literature and art. Armonk, N.Y.; London: M.E. Sharpe, 2001. p. 92-109

Wojakowska-Kurowska, Anna
Pisarka Pak Wanso oraz jej tworczosc w swietle opinii wlasnej oraz koreanskich krytykow literackich
Citation: Przeglad Orientalistyczny (Warsaw) nos.3-4 (whole nos.187-188) (1998) 250-253
ISSN: 0033-2283

OTHER WORKS

Pak, Wan-so; Epstein, Stephen J.; Kim, Mi Young, trs.
Korean Literature Today (Seoul) 5, no.3 (Fall 2000) 135-160
ISSN: 1229-6767

Pak, Wan-so; Yu, Young-nan, tr.
Literature and experience
In: Kim-Renaud, Young-Key; Grinker, R. Richard, eds. Creation and re-creation: modern Korean fiction and its translation. Washington D.C.: Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University , 2000. (Sigur Center Asia Papers, no.8) 5-7

Park Wan-so

Multiple Korean newspapers are noting the passing of brilliant Korean author Park Wan-so, who apparently died as the result of gallbladder cancer. Park had been battling the disease for years and her death leaves behind four daughters. An international literary treasure as well a national one, Park’s literary career  spanned thirty years, and she wrote more than 20 novels and 100 short stories, a fair proportion of which were translated into English.

Born in what is now a North Korean village in 1931, Park was a relatively late-bloomer as a published author, writing her first novel just before she turned 40.  The housewife turned into a novelist when her long story Namok, or Bare Tree, won a contest organized by a female magazine run by the Donga daily newspaper. Park became the Grand Dame of Korean letters, and in 1981 received the prestigious Yi Sang award for her novel, Mother’s Stake, and in 1990 the Korean Literature award.

Park was forced to drop out of the Korean literature department at Seoul National University at the onset of the Korean war (and at the death of her brother)  in order to work  at a US military base. During the war, Park was separated from her mother and elder brother by the North Korea army, which moved them to North Korea.

Park’s ouvre quickly grew and her work is revered in Korea.  Park’s early work focused on the tragedy of families separated by the Korean Civil war, and the ongoing damage caused by that war in its survivors is demonstrated in suck works as The Naked Tree, Warm Was the Winter that Year, and Who Ate Up all the Shinga (to which Park has released a second volume, not yet published in English, Was the Mountain Really There). Since about 1980, Park’s work has centered on families, problems affecting women in Korea’s extremely patriarchal sociaty and biting critiques of the middle class. Perhaps the most vivid example of this is in her work The Dreaming Incubator in which a woman is forced to undergo a series of abortions until she can deliver a male child.  Her best known works in Korea include Bad Luck in the City, Swaying Afternoons, Warm Was the Winter that Year, and Are you Still Dreaming? Park celebrated last year her 40th anniversary as a novelist. Her last book was an essay on her life as an old-aged writer, named Roads Not Taken Are More Beautiful,  published the same year. (Yonhap News)

Park’s translated novels include Who Ate up All the Shinga which sold some 1.5 million copies in Korean and was well-reviewed in English translation. Park is also published in The Red Room: Stories of Trauma in Contemporary Korea.

At the time of her death she lived in the village of Achui, in Guri, outside of the hustle and bustle of Seoul.

Park’s work focused on the traumas of war and its aftermath, but in the context of family stories that alternately tugged at the heartstrings and brought smiles of recognition. Her work allowed  multiple levels of understanding of Korean history, literature, and culture. Her work was primarily semi-autobiographical pieces in which families’ and women’s lives were  snarled in economic, social, and pyschological changes created by the war. Park’s work can be read on the simple plot level, for the complicated but essentially loving family stories or as most elegant and subtle introductions to pundhan munhak and all sorts of political, social and economic themes. Park’s stories, first and foremost,  shine through and the reader can appreciate the “Koreaness” of the story as his or her knowledge allows. Park’s indirect political strategy means that readers who know Korean history and culture  can understand the historical context  of her works, while a newcomer to Korean history can feel the same ominous undertones, but understand them within the narrower context of the family situation. Perhaps her most famous work in English was Who Ate Up All the Shinga, which was reviewed here at KTLIT:

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

But as Who Ate Up All the Shinga an “autobiographical novel” reveals, the authorial seeds were planted young. Who Ate Up All the Shinga’s relation to fiction is not at all coincidental. Park tips her hand on this on the book-sleeve, where she calls her work an “autobiographical novel.” In fact, it is a compelling story of a young girl who seems, almost unknown to herself, to be destined to write and then finally reaches that conclusion herself.

Park’s writing was touching, literary, clever and a sparkling window into Korean history and culture. She will be missed and cannot be replaced.

LINKS

Literature and Experience – an article by Park Wan-Seo about her life as a writer

The Naked Tree – an extract from the novel

Partial list of publications in English

My Very Last Possession: And Other Stories
The Red Room: Stories of Trauma in Contemporary Korea
Sketch of the Fading Sun
Three Days in That Autumn
Weathered Blossom (Modern Korean Short Stories)
Who Ate Up All the Shinga?: An Autobiographical Novel

Partial list of publications in Korean

The Naked Tree (Namok, 1970)
The Beginning of Days Lived (Sara-inneun, Nal-ui Sijak, 1980)
Mama’s Stake (Eommanui Malttuk, 1982)
Warm Was the Winter That Year (Geuhae Gyeoul-eun Ttatteuthaenne, 1983)
The Woman Standing (Seoinneun  Yoja, 1985)
Illusion (Mimang, 1990)
My Beautiful Neighbor (Na-ui Areumdaun Iut, 1991)
The Dreaming Incubator (Kkumkkuneun Incubator, 1993)
Such a Lonely You (Neomuna Sseulsseurhan Dangsin, 1999)
A Very Old Joke (Silcheonmunhak, 2000)
Who Ate up All the Sing-a (Woongjin, 2002)

Korean Lit, Fighting!

NOTE: This article was published in a slightly different form in this month’s 10 Magazine with two nifty sidebars (Kim Young-ha and a “what not to read”) and brilliant photos. You should check 10 Mag out.

If you’ve worked your way through all of Stieg Larsson and the Twilight series is beginning to become predictable (Find neck, insert teeth. Repeat as necessary)? Then it’s time to delve into Korean literature. And there is no better time than now. As few as two decades ago, translated Korean Modern fiction was a dreary procession, tramping slowly but completely over the same dusty terrain: Colonialization, the Korean War;  traumas of the political war that followed, and; the social and economic price of industrialization. A western reader, picking these books up and glancing over them, could easily be forgiven for putting them down with a shudder, and taking up less troublesome affairs like grave-robbing or self-mutilation.

For Western readers without knowledge of Korean culture and history, anything published before 1980 might seem a bit archaic and/or opaque. Having spent the first half of last century under the boot of the Japanese colonialists, and the latter half engaged either in an active or passive civil war, Korean modern literature has tended to grimness; combining the light-hearted joi-de-vivre of black-and-white Holocaust documentaries with a pronounced fratricidal tone that the Khmer Rouge would have immediately embraced. Unless you are a fan of history, or uncontrollable weeping, this is the literature to look past.

But a new wave (Hello Hallyu!) of Korean writers (and a sprinkling of evergreen perennials) has put much of that in the past, either moving on to new topics, or melding old topics to themes and stories that English readers can read and enjoy.

For more fun reads, and works with more comprehensible contents, beginners should generally turn their eyes to fiction written in the last 25 years or so. What to read depends on your interest. Are you interested in  literature in general? Do you like Women’s Lit? Looking for Modern literature with a Korean flavor? Do plucky family stories pluck your heartstrings? Do you like novels? Novellas? Short stories? Ever been in a Turkish prison?

A "Representative" Jimoondang Book Cover

If you’re looking for an introduction to the literature in general, one of the most common ways to get a quick, mostly enjoyable, and fairly representative take on Korean modern fiction is to dive into the Portable Library of Korean Fiction (PLKF). In fact, if you are in Korea, you might even have come across some of these slender, novella-sized books characterized by single-color, non-gloss covers with truly bizarre reversed-hangul designs. The PLKF is 26 books of short stories/novellas by authors of classic Korean modern literature including Yi Sang (The Wings), Kim Yu-jeong (The Camellias), Kim Moon-soo (The Chronicle of Manchwidang), and Ch’oe Yun (The Last of Hanako). While some of these works do focus on the “older” issues of modern literature that I have previously mentioned, they are nonetheless quite interesting and a quick way to be introduced to a range of Korean writers and fiction. They are also quite inexpensive; costing between 5,000 and 7,000 won depending on bookstore. As a bonus these books are like Seoul taxis; compact, and if you don’t like the one in front of you there will be another along shortly.

If you are a short story fan and searching for an inclusive anthology, look no farther than Land of Exile, which remains the accessible standard. Recently re-released to include more modern stories, this excellently translated work is a good starting point for a reader interested in understanding the general outlines of Korean post-WWII literature. It is organized chronologically, which helps demonstrate the general lines upon which Korean modern literature has developed and expanded.

Also quite good is Modern Korean Fiction: An Anthology, which covers some of the same territory as Land of Exile, including sharing a story. This sharing is a relatively common problem with translation of Korean literature: Because there are certain canonical fictions in the Korean mind, some stories get translated and re-translated, often with slightly different translations of the titles, which sometimes makes it difficult to determine where the duplications exist. Always be certain to carefully examine table of contents and also be aware that different romanizations of author’s names can cause confusion.

There are also collections for specific interests. Over half of modern Korean writers are women. At times women have been edited and published quite separately; at times women have been scarcely published at all. But make no mistake, separated or not, female Korean writers pack a punch, while often writing stories that seem more accessible to foreign readers. By combining the traditional concerns of Korean fiction with family and relationship-based themes, female Korean writers often offer up works that are easier to relate to than those of their male counterparts. Perhaps the most a famous collection is

Words of Farewell

Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers, which can be found on Amazon and contains stories written by Sok-Kyong, Chi-Won and Chong-Hui.

Specific female writers to look for include Park Wan-suh and Ch’oe Yun. Park Wan-suh writes stories like Amy Tan might have if half her family had been murdered. And I mean that in a good way. Ch’oe Yun writes often fantastical stories based on historical events.

Just last year Park released, Who Ate Up All The Shinga, which is an excellent mother/daughter semi-autobiographical story set in the time just before the Korean War. Park’s short story collection, Sketch of the Fading Sun is also worth checking out, and contains one of her most famous short stories, During Three Days of Autumn (also known as Three Days in that Autumn and published in the Jimoondang PLKL series). Park has also written Weathered Blossom, the story of a doomed elderly love-affair in a small novella with the Hollym imprint.

A quick note about the Hollym books: The works are chosen carefully, the covers are extraordinary, the bindings tight, the illustrations superb, and each book features the original Korean text as well as a built-in cloth bookmark. If you see one of these, it’s likely to be a good pick-up.

Ch’oe Yun first came to the attention of English readers with the publication of  Last of Hanako which was initially published by the PLKL and later added to Land of Exile in its latest edition. The story of youthful friends who are torn apart by circumstance, Last of Hanako depended on a plot twist that might seem obvious to a western reader. But with the 2008 release of the collection, There a Petal Silently Falls Ch’oe stepped firmly into the forefront of international Korean writers. The novella from which the book draws its title is a horrific story of family tragedy (based on real events in Kwangju in 1980) along the traditional plotlines of Korean literature, but Ch’oe invests the story with such surreal tragedy and a hallucinatory writing that the reader is pulled along. Whisper Yet is the slightest work in the book, and The Thirteen Scent Flower is a surreal, happy-yet-sad, story of an unlikely romance enmeshed in the coarse fabric of larger life.

The Red Room

There are other themed collections as well. If you are one of those people who instinctively head towards the sound of sirens, smell of smoke, screams of children or M. Night Shyamalan movies, The Red Room might be just right for you. The red-covered anthology contains three stories that focus on Korean traumas, including the excellent In the Realm of Buddha by Park Wan-suh. This in not particularly cheery stuff and should not be read near sharp objects or gas lines.

Korean literature also abounds with translated novellas and novels, and here it is useful to know the names of a few authors. Who knows, you might be able to drop some of these names and impress people at cocktail parties? Well, Korean cocktail parties, anyway!

Yi Mun-yol is an interesting writer whose work bridges the gap between the more traditional issues of modern Korean fiction and what might be called the cutting edge. Yi’s classic work Our Twisted Hero is a meditation on the uses and misuses of power, which metaphorically explores the Korean political situation of the 1970s and 80s. The Poet tells an even older story of poet Kim Sak-kat who dishonors his grandfather and suffers considerably for it. An Appointment With My Brother is perhaps his most predictable work, telling the story of a family bisected by the Korean War. But Yi is also capable of stunning modern work as his Twofold Song ably demonstrates with its explosive mix of surrealism and love-story. The word in Korean literary circles is that Yi is working on his first new fiction in over a decade, and if that is true, it is a publication to look forward to.

A longish novel, but quite easy to read due to its episodic structure, is Cho Se-hui’s The Dwarf. The Dwarf is a tremendously affecting and powerful work of social criticism focusing on the forced redevelopment of Seoul in the 1970s, and the human costs that accompanied it. It combines biting realism with a semi-fractured structure that pulls a reader into the difficult and fragmented era the work describes. Cho combines a kaleidoscopic narrative approach, powerful use of scientific symbols, and a dead-flat and deadeye narrative tone. The Dwarf was enormously popular at its first publication, and its key chapter A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball has been reprinted in Korea 245 times as a short story or novella. A potential reader should be certain to get the complete version of this story, rather than the abridged PLKF version.

Kim Young-ha is a resolutely modern writer whose work features an existential edge. His dreamlike, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, asks questions about art, sex, identity, and death, while speeding through locations in Seoul and overseas. Kim’s deadeye laconic creation of a policeman in Photo Shop Murder (published in the PLKL series in the book Photo Shop Murder) is perfect for anyone who likes the true-crime genre, and as a bonus this book includes the alienated but amusing, What Ever Happened To The Guy In The Elevator? In addition to these, Chi Young-Kim (who translated I Have the Right to Destroy Myself and Lee Dong-ha’s A Toy City) has just translated Kim Young-ha’s latest novel, The Empire of Light (renamed Your Empire is Calling You)

The authors and books mentioned here are only the tip of the translated iceberg, and only intended to be a jumping-off point. I have left out many great authors and great works; I haven’t mentioned Kyung-ran Jo’s Tongue: A Novel, Sok-yong Hwang’s The Guest, the upcoming publication of Kyung-sook Shin’s Please Look After Mom, well.. you get the idea. But once you begin to take a look at modern Korean literature, it becomes your pleasure to track down the rest of it!

PS.. If there is something you feel I missed, or some story or novel you’d like to advocate for?  That’s why I have a comment button.

The first one is a review of The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost. LKL says:

Looks like an interesting new book about to hit UK bookshops on 29 September, from Columbia University Press: The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost by Kim Sok-pom

And reprints the publisher’s blurb so we can check it out. It’s an interesting looking book, and the cover is just great looking (which sounds like faint praise, but as a marketer I can tell you it’s not). I’ll come back to this one, once I’ve read it, because from the blurb it seems like a very interesting, very complicated book, that will be a very big failure to sell or do anything to advance Korean culture outside of Korea.

Next is a an essay on Park Wan-suh’s Who Ate Up All The Shinga, a book I really liked and reviewed here. The essay is by Alice Bennell, who won last year’s Korean Literature Translation Institute essay contest on “There a Petal Silently Falls.” She only won this contest, of course, because it was limited to people in the UK, and thus I could not send in a submission.^^ Here is an excerpt:

What is remarkable about Who Ate Up All the Shinga is that we witness the life events that shaped the author as an artist, alongside a backdrop of a difficult period of Korea’s modern history. As she grows into an adolescent, not only does her personal life become more complex, but Korea’s political situation darkens and culminates into full-blown civil war. The universal theme of growing up, of the turmoil of one’s developing identity during adolescence, is amplified by Korea’s own identity crisis.

Finally, a review of “Your Republic is Calling You” that focuses on some slightly different things than KTLIT focused on in our review. The line that struck me hardest has little to do with the book per se:

Kim Young-ha’s latest novel to be translated is a breath of fresh air compared with much Korean literature available in translation. It is to be hoped that it reaches a wide audience: it certainly deserves to.

In fact.. that line seems to me possible to apply (in a reverse fashion) to The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost.

I hope I’m wrong……

Buying the book will tell…

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