A Tribute to Park Wan-so as she Passes Away at Age 80


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 as author, writing her first novel just before she turned 40.˙ The housewife turned into a novelist when her long story Namok, or Bare Trees, 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 such 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 centered on families, problems affecting women in Korea?s extremely patriarchal society 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,˙ and published that same year. 

Park?s translated novels include Who Ate up All the Shinga which sold some 1.5 million copies in Korea 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 in 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 newcomers to Korean history or culture can feel the same ominous undertones, but understand them within the narrower context of the family situation. Perhaps Park?s most famous work in English was Who Ate Up All the Shinga, which is reviewed on www.ktlit and is a brilliant book on at least three levels

Park?s writing was touching, literary, clever and a sparkling window into Korean history and culture. If you?re interested in reading more on Park Wan-suh simply go to Amazon and look up Who Ate Up All the Shinga an excellent autobiographical novel about a mother and daughter; Weathered Blossom a story about an aged love affair, or; Three Days in that Autumn the story of a doctor nearing the end of her career. They?re all great, and they are all worth reading.

Park will be missed, tragically missed, and cannot be replaced.

This has been Charles Montgomery, podcasting for KTLIT and Nanoomi.net.