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[DUTCH] Genre-Defying Honesty
One of the things I appreciate most about translated literature—something that makes reading across borders invaluable, if not indispensable—is the way in which it allows the reader a glimpse of life in unfamiliar parts of the world. As translation is an act of empathy, so too is reading in translation. This holds true for fiction and, perhaps even more so, for non-fiction. I was reminded of this while revisiting Baek Se Hee’s I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, in which the author offers a glimpse of life as she knows it. A refreshing mix of dialogue and micro-essays, Baek’s candid take on mental health is as genre-defying—memoir? self-help? psychology?—as it is thought-provoking. In her prologue, Baek describes the impetus for writing this book as twofold: first, to search for others who feel similarly to her—feelings caused in part by dysthymia, or persistent depressive disorder—she decided to stop endlessly looking for them and see if others would recognize themselves in her. Given the tremendous success of her book, both nationally and internationally, I’d like to believe that many people do. And for those who don’t, Baek adds, her work might help them better understand those who do. Second, she sees her book as an artistic practice, referring to art as a channel of hope and a way to “stir someone’s heart.” It is precisely this creative flair that removes any negative suspicions the reader may have about the type of book they are holding. A far cry from mind-numbing strands of “self-help” in the conventional sense of the word (“Do this and get better!”), I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki stands its ground as a work of literature in its own right. I should also add that According to Chicago style, it should be Pelckmans’s choice to hold onto the original cover illustration, a gorgeous creation by graphic designer DancingSnail, helps to elicit the literary character of the book. The format that Baek goes on to explore is equally original as it is stimulating. Most chapters start with a short anecdote or reflection that introduces a new topic. The main body of each chapter consists of dialogues between Baek and her psychiatrist followed by a short essay. These conversations, however, are not presented as stand-alone snippets, but as a carefully curated whole, weaving together a narrative that the reader glides through from start to finish. To be sure, for an essayistic work on the complexities of mental health, this book is quite the page-turner.And what makes it such a gripping read is Baek’s level of honesty. Through her session transcripts, Baek literally invites the reader into the room with her therapist. The pitfall that she deftly avoids in her essays is the tendency to present “takeaways” and “lessons learnt.” Yes, things are learnt over the course of her therapy sessions, but I would be hesitant to call these “lessons.” Therapy—if I may speak from personal experience—teaches you something about yourself as a person. It is a welcome fact then that Baek eschews the didactic approach altogether, instead mulling over her findings in a much more subtle vein and leaving it up to the reader to take and pick as they choose. One is free, at all times, to disagree with Baek—or her psychiatrist, for that matter. I for one certainly felt like I saw things differently every now and then. Such is the nature of any conversation on mental health. To use a phrase recurrent in the book, “black-and-white-thinking” has hardly ever served anyone well. Steering clear of any attempt to profess universal truths, Baek’s essays are sharp, perceptive, sometimes humorous, and always engaging. In short, a book discussing topics such as self-image, anxiety and codependency in a more genuine way than I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is probably hard to come by. Its format is captivating and label-resistant. Although some readers might feel initially thrown off, Baek’s nuanced style brings us around. Without fail, she invites us to relate and rethink. Going back to her reason for practicing art and writing this book, I’ll confess: my heart was stirred. Mattho ManderslootLiterary Translator
by Mattho Mandersloot
[GERMAN] Think Again in Novel Form
After leaving her job and husband, Yeong-ju opens a bookshop in the district of Hyunam-dong. Although the location does not at first seem ideal for a bookshop, she sets her heart on it upon noticing that the hyu (ýÌ) in Hyunam-dong is the Chinese character for “rest”. Rest seems to be exactly what the characters in this novel long for. Yeong-ju herself suffers from burnout; Min-jun, the barista in the bookshop, falls into depression after he can’t land a secure job despite having been a straight-A student all his life; Jung-suh, Yeong-ju’s most loyal customer, is in a constant state of anger due to unfair work conditions; Seung-woo, a blogger and author, quits his exhausting job as a programmer; Ji-mi, the owner of a coffee-roasting company, finds herself lost in a self-destructive marriage; and both high-school student Min-cheol and his mother Hee-ju feel overwhelmed by their roles as son and mother. Yeong-ju’s bookshop brings these characters together and provides a safe space to reflect on their life decisions. It’s not a place where problems are miraculously solved, but a place that encourages people to rethink. This means the hyu doesn’t imply inactivity but rather the leisure to have time to think. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is not a novel that caters to our cognitive laziness by offering simple truths; it challenges us to question old views and open up to new ones. Although Yeong-ju is full of self-doubt, she treasures stories that guide her to places she never expected. The novel explicitly refers to more than twenty books and films to stimulate thinking on certain problems. For example, at one point the barista Min-jun and Yeong-ju discuss whether it makes sense to follow a dream. Is following an unachievable dream a waste of one’s life? Or can following a dream itself be so fulfilling that it might be worthwhile to devote your whole life to it, whether you reach it or not? Yeong-ju then cites Hermann Hesse’s Demian and suggests that no dream is permanent. Since each dream is replaced by a new one, we shouldn’t cling to any of them. This is a typical example of a discussion among members of the Hyunam-dong Bookshop community. These discussions don’t end with a clear answer, but they do encourage both the characters and the reader to keep thinking. Although Yeong-ju is the central figure of the community, she is not a voice of wisdom that tells the others how to lead their lives. Many conversations don’t even involve her. For example, at one point Min-cheol asks Seung-woo whether people should pursue what they like to do or what they are good at. After Seung-woo gives several suggestions, Min-cheol concludes that the point is not to feel relaxed and carefree. Sometimes, it seems we just have to accept a complicated situation and its ensuing confusion, and continue to ponder it. At other times, it’s books or films that help the protagonists find their answers. Despite his growing reputation as the barista at the bookshop, Min-jun still wonders why his life is so difficult and nothing seems to work according to his original plans. After the film screening of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After the Storm at the bookshop, he identifies with the film’s protagonist Ryota, a former writer turned private detective crippled by a gambling addiction as he struggles to reconcile with his ex-wife and son. Min-jun realizes that life might have been so difficult for Ryota because it had been the first time for him to live life. This realization brings him some comfort. How can something be easy when we do it for the first time? Adam Grant’s bestselling book Think Again encourages us to break out of our cognitive laziness and stay curious about the world. Although the comfort of conviction may seem more inviting than the discomfort of doubt, questioning ourselves and “thinking again” is the only way to open our minds and to learn. We can read Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop as Think Again in novel form. The remote bookshop feels like an oasis that invites us to rest and to think again. The pillars of this oasis are the love of books and the community of book lovers that is not exclusive but waiting for us. Who knows when the time will come when we need a story in our life to help us think again? Barbara WallAssociate Professor of Korean Studies,University of Copenhagen
by Barbara Wall
[FRENCH] Man is an Owl to Man
Nature is not all good. Especially in this remote region where the forest seems to be at one with the darkness. Park In-su, a man hired to stop visitors from entering, has the impression that the forest is watching his every move. At all hours of the day and night, he hears it like a nagging whisper that exhausts and weakens him. When he moved in the village below the mountain with his wife Yu-jin and son Se-oh, he thought he was putting his violent behavior and alcohol issues behind him. One time, after drinking too much, he injured his little boy after throwing him against the wall. Since then, Se-oh has been unable to bear being alone with him. But in this village, home to the many forest lumberjacks, there’s not much to do in the off-season beside getting drunk. A stranger soon upsets the village’s dull routine. Lee Ha-in is a lawyer whose estranged older brother has disappeared. Convinced that his brother had been working as a forest ranger before In-su replaced him, Ha-in has arrived in an attempt to track him down. After the opening scene—a masterful conversation between Ha-in and In-su—we are introduced to the villagers as Ha-in encounters them one by one to show them a photo of his brother. They all deny recognizing him. Thanks to the omniscient narrator, the reader knows that none of them are telling the truth. Yet they can’t betray the forest. They all know it would never forgive them. After reading Hye-young Pyun’s The Owl Cries, walking through a dark forest will become an anxious task. The reader will also be aptly reminded of the iconic line from David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks: “The owls are not what they seem.” In this novel, when owls hoot, misfortune strikes. When In-su discovers the phrase, “In the forest the owl lives!” written in a notebook left by one of his predecessors, he initially finds it absurd (of course an owl lives in the forest, it’s its natural habitat!). But how can the reader trust In-su? His drinking causes visual and auditory hallucinations, and he feels as if he’s slipping into a parallel world. Is his house as strange as he thinks? Is that old stain on the wooden staircase really blood? Why does the padlock on the gate open onto the forest instead of the courtyard? And what’s lurking in the basement that Yu-jin keeps locked? In Pyun’s novels, redemption is rare for those who have failed in life. A master at creating stifling atmospheres, the writer seems to have a predilection for losers who struggle with forces beyond their control. While her plots are most often set in cities (haunted by the threat of an epidemic, as in Dans l’antre d’Aoï Garden (tr. Jeongmin Domissy-Lee, 2015), or destroyed by an earthquake, as in City of Ash and Red (tr. Lim Yeong-hee and Françoise Nagel, 2012), the natural elements are a perfect fit with her dark, desperate universe. Marked by unflinching honesty, her writing is not gentle with any of the characters, just like nature. Pyun imagines a forest that swallows up those who enter it, turning it into a metaphor for human society. During his search, Ha-in learns that his brother is far from being the only one to have disappeared in this strange land. Because of the arduousness of their work, lumberjacks vanish from one day to the next, as if the forest had swallowed them up. The toxicity of human relationships is no match for the harshness of the environment. As a metaphor for the human community, the forest oppresses all those who come near it, and individualism stems naturally from the frustrations and domination of the strongest over the weakest. The Owl Cries is one of those stories that leaves you with no illusions about the human race, and allows you to understand why some people might prefer animals to their own kind. Laëtitia FavroLiterary Critic for Le Point, Lire, and Livres Hebdo
by Laëtitia Favro
[CHINESE] A Different Kind of Possibility in a Postapocalyptic World
Kim Choyeop’s The Greenhouse at the End of the World carries forward the signature style of her short stories, depicting alternative possibilities with a gentle yet firm touch. Like many science fiction works of this era, the book starts with a global catastrophe. However, unlike those stories where a white male hero comes to the rescue, this book focuses on a group of women surviving the apocalypse and one woman who discovers their story after the world is rebuilt. In many literary works and in the real world, we often encounter gender stereotypes—women are expected to be associated with certain identities while being distanced from others. However, the women in this book are scientists, soldiers, and mechanics, as well as mothers, daughters, and sisters. They live in a futuristic world where they can be brave and tough, but also gentle and attentive at the same time. And in this setting, there’s no sense of contradiction or constraint imposed by gender. Binary thinking is generally challenged in Kim’s narrative: the official and the civilian, selfishness and altruism, plants and machines, the natural and artificial, the beneficial and harmful—despite appearing mutually exclusive, they’re actually deeply intertwined. Consider the strange plant Mossvana, which appears throughout the book: it’s a blend of nature and technology, serving as an effective agent against dust while at the same time representing a malevolent force of unchecked growth. However, these assessments of effectiveness and malevolence are derived from a human perspective. The plant itself doesn’t have a specific purpose; it merely evolves to adapt and survive. Humans are the ones who consider the plant’s ability to reduce dust to be beneficial, but its toxic stems and leaves harmful, and its blue luminescence irrelevant. This plant species became a trailblazer in a particular era, then retreated into history. Whether it is rediscovered or researched doesn’t affect the plant itself. Rachel, the creator of Mossvana, exhibits a similar pattern. Her limbs and organs have been replaced by machine components, and her blood with nano-fluids, making her a cyborg. She studies plants because she is interested in them, and she modifies them because she can. She doesn’t intend to save the world, nor does she aim to destroy it. Rachel is a character full of mysteries that defy straight answers. When the last organic part of her brain is removed, does she still retain some humanity, or has she become a machine? When the chip in her brain is manipulated by Ji Su, does she still have free will? Is the relationship between Rachel and Ji Su, which transitions from curiosity to dependence, a form of love? Kim doesn’t impose judgments on her characters but leaves room for readers to come up with their own interpretations. Readers are then free to imagine future possibilities. As challenges like climate change and artificial intelligence shape our future, science fiction tropes are becoming reality. Kim’s stories help us to prepare for the changes ahead, devising guidelines we can follow in times of despair. As Susan Watkins observed in Contemporary Women’s Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, rather than nostalgic restoration of what has been lost, women writers reimagine post-apocalyptic scenarios and propose alternative possible futures. In The Greenhouse at the End of the World, Kim depicts a post-apocalyptic utopia led by women. She reminds us that no utopia can last forever, and that any grand communal structure designed to withstand the future will eventually collapse in extreme conditions. However, these women focus on living well in the here and now, even if their past experiences are not believed and their contributions to save humanity beyond the utopia are not recognized. Their survival against the most difficult times and adversaries becomes a testament to the possibility of whatever utopia—no matter how transient—they can find. Translated by Shaoyan Hu Regina Kanyu WangWriter, Editor, ResearcherHugo Award Finalist for “Zhurong on Mars” and Locus Award finalist for The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories.
by Regina Kanyu Wang
[ENGLISH] Across Oceans of Time and Incalculable Change
Among the most exciting changes in the South Korean literary scene is the fact that the nation’s science fiction works are gaining notable access to a global audience. A decade ago, most of the leading lights of Korean speculative fiction remained untranslated and inaccessible abroad, but all that has changed. It’s now unsurprising that powerhouse author Kim Bo-young has had multiple books appear almost simultaneously in English translation, including I’m Waiting for You. This book is unusual in several ways, not the least of which is its pairing of two very disparate literary diptychs. The first, comprising the title story and its sequel, “On My Way To You,” is an epistolary narrative translated by Sophie Bowman that explores how well love stands up to the “cold equations” of the universe. An engaged couple is challenged by the inexorable forces of physics as they travel at light speed, finding themselves separated from one another by the relativistic effects of time dilation, even as time rushes past back on Earth. Is love enough to sustain them in their struggle to be reunited? Love challenged by time dilation is, of course, a concept that has been explored before in SF—nothing is new under this or any other sun—but the execution is what matters, and this pair of stories share a wonderful interplay, contrasting the hell of being alone with the hell of being with others. It is a surprisingly pessimistic story in the big picture, and yet this serves as a fitting test of the love expressed in the couple’s letters to one another. The overall effect is moving, even more so when one realizes that the title story was commissioned as a proposal gift from one of Kim’s fans to another. (The story quite literally “worked”: the two are now very happily married!) The other pair of stories, translated by Sung Ryu and including “The Prophet of Corruption” and “That One Life,” explore different narratives. These tales focus on the philosophical and ethical struggles of consciousnesses in a universe that, at least to this reader, feels like an intriguing amalgamation of Buddhist cosmology and the simulation hypothesis—the idea that our universe is an immersive simulation of some sort, and we are individual programs existing only within it. Although the simulation hypothesis is not explicitly mentioned, it’s impossible to miss the parallels between it and the alternative Buddhist cosmology Kim explores here. What if samsara—the unending cycle of birth, death, and reincarnation—were a massive self-learning project for a living, conscious universe, and that along the way, the architects of this project learned enough to begin disputing the assumptions of the project itself? The story is a worldbuilding extravaganza of speculative creativity, playing the same kind of games invention with Buddhist cosmology that hard SF authors typically play with physics, astronomy, and biology. Here science-fictional tropes like spaceships take on special relevance, tied to the questioning of the underpinnings of the story’s universe itself. In this diptych, the novella “The Prophet of Corruption” is definitely the standout, as both a memorable and a deeply challenging read. Given the scope and breadth of Kim’s oeuvre and the marked differences between these sets of stories, one might wonder regarding the rationale behind this specific pairing. However, I found a surprising affinity between the two diptychs. An epigram prefacing the book offers a suggestion as to why. It reads, “The way I see it, loving one person means loving the universe.” Another link between these stories, of course, is that both present the reader with characters that cross staggering vistas of time and navigate radical change and loss driven on by unwavering passion and commitment. These stories somehow manage to be grand epics despite focusing on only a small handful of characters. The translation here is deceptively lucid and smooth: like the best musicians and acrobats, Bowman and Ryu make difficult, daunting work appear surprisingly easy and natural. Kim’s writing can sometimes be profoundly challenging to render in English, and I felt nothing short of admiration while reading the text, noting often where the translators deftly preserved ambiguities that, while natural in Korean, are much more difficult to maintain in English. (One example is the indeterminacy of gender for many of Kim’s characters, which Bowman mentions in her notes.) Especially impressive was Ryu’s convincing and fluid rendering of the intermingling of Buddhist and scientistic language in “The Prophet of Corruption.” Worthy of mention are the translator’s notes, which are presented in unusual epistolary form, mirroring the letters of the title story and “On My Way To You.” Although initially dubious about this approach, ultimately I appreciated the decision to convey their notes in this way. The letters are as polyphonic as are the stories in this book, a polyphony amplified by the inclusion not only the author’s notes on the tales but also the reader responses of the original audience for “I’m Waiting for You,” the couple whose marriage proposal was intimately tied up with the story. The overall effect is a reminder that all experience and storytelling is multivocal and multi-perspectival. So it is with the genre as a whole—for SF authors are in constant dialogue with one another through their works—and I am genuinely happy that English-speakers are now being afforded greater access. I’m Waiting for You is a great starting point for exploring that dialogue in the sure hands of one of Korea’s most celebrated and thoughtful SF authors. Gord SellarAuthor/Translator and Professor Institute for General EducationKorea University (Sejong Campus)
by Gord Sellar
[CHINESE] Father's Liberation Diary: Weaving the Web of Time
Father’s Liberation Diary is a biographical novel written by Jeong Ji A who dedicated over ten years to its refinement. The author, recipient of prestigious awards including the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award and the Hahn Moo-Sook Literary Prize, became known through her novel, The Partisan’s Daughter in 1990, which recounted the experiences of her parents in guerrilla warfare. Father’s Liberation Diary, seen as a sequel to this work, goes beyond the “partisan” label to reveal her father’s multifaceted nature as both a loving parent and an ordinary individual. Upon its release, the novel became an instant best seller with a circulation exceeding 300,000 copies and received widespread praise, including from former South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and author Jiang Yani. The author structured the novel using the aggregation method of a “funeral,” allowing the multiple characters to appear one by one naturally. These characters, with their varying ages, identities, and ideologies, include former comrades, a teenager, a shopkeeper, Vietnamese immigrants, a younger uncle, a rice cake shop owner, etc. Each gather at this ceremony and tell their stories. Through this masterful storytelling technique that transcends time and space, the father’s different stages in life are pieced together. Death is the starting point. Untangling the knot in “my heart,” “I” sheds away preconceived notions of “my” father solely as a socialist or guerrilla fighter. For the first time ever, “I” grasps her father’s profound love for humanity—a love that extends beyond ideological boundaries—and also comprehends his desires and affections as an ordinary man. Her father, a staunch socialist, is not rigid in his thinking. His great love for non-socialist individuals and his understanding of non-materialistic religious beliefs are touching and admirable—no matter what, he places human values above all else. This structural approach allows for a nostalgic exploration of the father’s life that surpasses mere personal emotional reminiscence, offering an objective perspective of his experiences. The work not only captures the father’s enthusiasm and righteousness, but also “inappropriately” collects his affairs—his flirtation with the shopkeeper and unsatisfied sexual desire during his marriage are honestly written out, revealing the author’s evolving attitude towards her father, from fleeing struggle to sincere understanding. This intricate tapestry of stories spans over fifty years of time. The experience of the younger uncle brings sadness and warmth to the story. As a child, the uncle idolized his brother, the protagonist’s father. However, the relationship between the two took a turn for the worse when the uncle’s son’s promising future was shattered due to the protagonist’s father’s political activity. Whether or not the uncle will come to mourn his brother becomes an ongoing tension that runs through the narrative. The uncle’s belated appearance at the funeral pushes the novel to its climactic moment of “liberation”: all hatred and prejudice find release, not only the uncle’s, but also of the people connected to “my” father. The author understands that her guerrilla father always had within him an unwavering principle of humanity which transcended ideology, race, and class. In terms of language, the beginning sets the tone for the whole novel with a few short sentences: “Father is dead. He hit his head on a utility pole. My father, who’s been living with a straight face all his life ended his sincere life in this way.” The language is clear and simple, humorous and witty, evoking profound melancholy. While recounting the hardships endured by the protagonist’s father, the language recalls a cold mountain village. This coolness is balanced by heartwarming scenes: from taking in a woman peddler and ends up being deceived, to the long-awaited return of the rice cake shop owner, and playful moments spent with her father in the mountains. The death of the father brings liberation. Through this multi-perspective narrative, the father is no longer seen as a guerrilla or a communist, but simply as “my” father. This book is a profound recollection of this father’s life, an exploration of the intense emotions caused by that special era, and ultimately, a final reconciliation with herself. Zhao JingEditor, Shanghai Translation Publishing House
by Zhao Jing
[ENGLISH] Mater 2-10: A Train Ride Through a Century of Korean History
In recent years, perhaps triggered by the commercial and critical success of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, and the American publishing industry’s shift towards selling more diverse literary voices in all genres, there has been a surge of Korean American novels inspired by the lives of the authors’ parents and grandparents—i.e., the experience of living in twentieth-century Korea through the peninsula’s colonial and war-torn decades. Many of these books are finely wrought, deeply researched, and rightly criticize the United States’s interventionist and destructive role during the Korean War. In reading work about the same period of North and South Korean history by Korean authors translated into English, however, one can’t help but notice a greater level of nuance and complexity that a less American-centric authorial lens allows. Few Korean writers are more accomplished and acclaimed worldwide than Hwang Sok-yong. In the author’s original afterword from Mater 2-10, Hwang writes that the novel was born from a conversation with an old man in Pyongyang in 1989. The old man’s father was a railroad worker who had fled from Seoul during a South Korean crackdown on labor unions, which were associated with Communist activity during the Cold War. Now 81, Hwang has authored dozens of books, spent seven years in a South Korean prison for an unauthorized trip to North Korea for which he was later pardoned, fought on the side of the Americans in the Korean Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, and has been a vocal activist for Korean reunification. Mater 2-10 might be his final book, and at nearly 500 pages, it is Hwang’s capstone, a book that brings together the author’s interests in Korean history, reunification, and leftist politics into a single definitive work. The book begins with Yi Jino, a third-generation railroad worker who has been laid off, high in the air. For over a year, he holds a one-person strike on the precarious catwalk, atop a factory chimney, subsisting on meals and medical aid brought up by his union. While he braves the elements as seasons change, his ancestors visit him in apparitions or hallucinations. His mother calls and says, “Picketing has always been in the Yi family blood . . . Don’t even think of coming down any time soon. So many have died for the cause already.” Those who have read The Guest and The Old Garden will be familiar with Hwang’s blurring of the boundaries between the living and the dead. The book toggles between the stories of Jino, his great-grandfather Baekman, who started as a railroad trainee in the 1920s, his grandfather Ilcheol, and his father Jisan. Hwang’s novel portrays a colonized nation—first under Japanese rule, then American—that hated and criminalized unions for a century. Workers who demanded fair wages and safe working conditions were routinely kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned, and murdered. While the American labor movement has had infamous eruptions of violence throughout its history, the persecution of unionized workers in South Korea was brutal and ruthless on another level. One of the most complex and compelling characters is Choi Daryeong, recruited and given the name “Yamashita” by a Japanese policeman who struggles to pronounce his Korean name. Daryeong’s job is to infiltrate and spy on labor unions, starting with book clubs formed by factory workers. With the fervor and ruthlessness of Inspector Javert in Les Miserables, Daryeong spends decades encircling his old classmate Yi Ilcheol and his family, first for his Japanese bosses and then for his American ones. He does his job so well that he climbs the ranks from spy to police chief. The exploration of moral gray areas is a characteristic of much of Hwang’s fiction. Daryeong is a nuanced character empowered to choose his own circumstances rather than to simply endure injustice. Though he’s clearly the Yi family’s archenemy, Daryeong describes himself as neither victim nor villain. In a meeting with Ilcheol, Daryeong says, “Just as you drove a train for a living, I did police work—for a living.” Mater 2-10 refers to the locomotive that was originally manufactured during the Japanese colonial period, “Mater” being a Japanese abbreviation for “mountain.” The railroad these locomotives ran upon were eventually seized by the South Korean Army only to be destroyed by the Allies as they retreated. Today, the ruins lie in the Demilitarized Zone as a symbol of the severed connection between two nations that were once one. My hope is that, with the surge of interest in literary work from Korean Americans about twentieth-century Korea, readers will be encouraged to seek out work from writers like Hwang Sok-yong, whose vital, complicated stories come from both research and lived experience. Leland CheukAuthor, No Good Very Bad Asian (C&R Press, 2019)
by Leland Cheuk
[JAPANESE] One-letter Dictionary: The Emotional Lessons of Poetry
Consider reading a one-syllable word as a poem. Out of 창 (window), for example, a skyscraper suddenly rises before my eyes. At dusk, its windows light up one by one until the building glows like an ear of corn made out of light. Behind each window is a person, each living their own life, carrying their own hopes and fears. My head spins thinking of all these lives I’ll never know. A one-syllable word can recall more than just images. I am in a place, 곳, where the wind brushes against my skin. The aroma wafting from a bakery sets my stomach rumbling. Why is the smell of baking bread so enticing? I hear a distant hubbub of voices from a backstreet. The scene is bathed in sunshine. A single word elicits memories of the past, which contain not only our five senses but also sensations within our bodies. These revive vivid moments that must have been important. You wonder where such a precious accumulation of sensation had been hiding. These moments wait until they are called up, sustaining us in ways beyond our understanding to make life bearable. Usually, we read words as their meanings and, therefore, as tools, which is an impoverished way of using language. For an example, try looking up a word in a dictionary. As the poet Kim So Yeon says, dictionary definitions are whittled down to concise outlines from which all nuance is absent. Because understanding depends on sacrificing that which we do not understand, dictionaries lose the warmth, feel, smell, and everything else that should imbue each word. Confined to the present moment, this impoverished language takes away the fullness and freshness of our lives until we spend our days as useful machines. We become so focused on completing our tasks that we are no longer moved by what we see and hear. We have money. We have relationships. But we do not have what we need, or understand what we lack. Then a moment comes where you stop short. Why does life feel impalpable like a cloud, even though we produce solid work? Despite that, though, we can still turn to poetry. Kim’s book offers a lesson for reclaiming our sensations and emotions. Arrange the petals of a dead flower 꽃 and conduct a funeral alone. Put them in a row, then rearrange them into a star shape. The petals transmit their warmth to your fingertips. Their sweet colors draw your gaze. Such things will fade, but they are here now and offer us comfort. We then realize that our emotions have broken out of their shell and are opening up to the petals, and beyond. It is a transition that transcends the boundaries of self, allowing my heart to connect with yours. To find out what is inside a seed 씨, you cannot split it in two. Plant it in soil, water it. Put it somewhere with lots of sunlight. Put it outside, then bring it back inside, look for where it grows well. A few leaves emerge, the stem lengthens. To think that it is possible to care so deeply about the unfurling of a life! Spend time together. The seed ages steadily, and so do we. What was once a tiny seed can show us the meaning of being alive. One realizes that what was inside the seed was the time, the room, the sensations, and everything that connected us and it. The experience even inspires gratitude to the seed, for teaching us this humility. A song 곡 may contain within itself the breathing of another person and the beating of their heart. In a fight, fear makes the heart pound quickly. On a quiet walk on the beach with someone you love, your pulse slows. When we immerse ourselves in music, we settle deeply into the rhythm of another’s breathing and the tempo of their heart. In this way, we reach out from inside our bodies to connect with beings other than ourselves. Consider opening yourself to the outside. When we do this, poetry—the music of words—connects us with one another. Language has had this function since ancient times, and Kim reminds us of it here. Translated by Sylvia Gallagher Koji TokoProfessor of American Literature, Waseda University
by Koji Toko
[SPANISH] Semilla: Some Machines Are Happier Than Human Beings
The literature of Bora Chung is both easy and uneasy: easy because her clear and direct writing allows us to enter the story like a knife into a block of tofu, uneasy because her stories scrape like a punch on a block of ice. Watch out: it’s fascinating. Her readers in Spanish already have significant proof of it in Cursed Bunny—whose English translation by Anton Hur made her a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2022—and the recent Semilla (Seed), a collection of stories selected and published by the Colombian publisher Vestigio in 2023. Seed is composed of a dozen stories. The last three break with the rest: they have continuity and form a brief trilogy; they almost seem like a nouvelle in three parts. [Known as the “Princess, Knight, Dragon” trilogy in Korea.—Ed.] Here Chung adapts the classic medieval fairytale, the one that begins with “Once upon a time” and ends with “happily ever after,” the plot unfolding among castles and forests, red-lipped damsels and knights in shining armor. The author apparently likes this format, having used it previously in the story “Ruler of the Winds and Sands” in Cursed Bunny. It offers her the opportunity to reformulate the archetypical figures of kings, queens, dragons, fairy godmothers, princes and princesses. As Vladimir Propp outlined a century ago in his Morphology of the Folktale, in all such tales, myths elaborate tropes such as spells upon the princess of virginal beauty, kisses from the prince to awaken her, wishes and betrayals. The author shows some of her cards—fantasy, spells, terror—in this sort of tarot deck that opens the doors to the earthly world and the underworld, but also to the classical and contemporary sentimental worlds. In “A Very Ordinary Marriage,” for example, Chung transforms an activity as routine as talking on the phone into something extraordinary. The story considers how enigmatic we become the closer we get to our significant other. It is an observation of the codes of discretion that married love requires. It is about treating the framework of the couple with horror and humor, an invincible combination when it comes to defining the sociological, or even anthropological, gaze. “The End of the Journey,” a science fiction story, further elucidates Chung’s view of human behavior. There is a ship like a modern Noah’s Ark filled with doctors, biologists, chemists, and pharmacists. There is a sick planet, a cannibalistic epidemic spread in a rural town in Iowa. And there is a protagonist, a survivor and expert in deciphering texts. In line with the last element of “The End of the Journey,” it is interesting how Chung slips reflections on language into her plots. In “Seed,” the title story, vegetal language is the backbone of some of the themes that interest the author: environmental crisis, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (a topic that is also present in “Goodbye, My Love,” Cursed Bunny) and vegetal intelligence. Here, trees speak through their dense networks of roots, as they perhaps also do in real life. Pollen as word, word as pixel, Chung emerges victorious in this complex exercise of endowing humanity to plant-characters in a story about the smallness of the world facing the plague of civilization and the hugeness of macrocorporations. Technology is the key to all of this, as we find out in “Maria, Gratia Plena,” where a consciousness-scanning machine, the PAM-21, becomes the protagonist of a violent noir story that serves as denouement for a settling of scores in the gender struggle. Neurology, consciousness, and technology in the style of Philip K. Dick or Ursula K. LeGuin, this is a story where Justice and Technology end up being presided over by the same ministry. Machines are happier than human beings—or, as the author ventures, at least some of them are. But beneath the dystopia shrouding her stories bears the deepest and most committed ethics: that which is perceived without any apparent complaint but swells in our consciousness after reading. As the author confesses in a closing note for her Spanish-language readers, before science fiction (although she prefers to speak of speculative fiction), all these stories are ultimately love stories. Translated by Lucina Schell Bruno GalindoWriter and journalist
by Bruno Galindo
[FRENCH] Impossibles Adieux: A Tragic Yet Tender Journey Into the Depths of Winter
It was ten years ago, in 2014, that the French public discovered Han Kang, with the translation of The Wind Is Blowing. The novelist was forty-four at the time. Next, we discovered The Vegetarian, the 2016 winner of the Man Booker International Prize, followed by Human Acts and Greek Lessons. However, it was only in 2023, when Éditions Grasset published a translation of Impossibles Adieux (first published in South Korea in 2021) that the great novelist finally gained widespread recognition among French readers and critics. In part this was because it was awarded the Prix Médicis for translated fiction, previous recipients of which include Milan Kundera, Umberto Eco, Philip Roth, Aharon Appelfeld, and Doris Lessing (who would later win the Nobel Prize in Literature). The same work was also shortlisted for the Prix Femina. It is with great tenderness, and a sort of all-encompassing poetry palpable on each page, that Han explores the close relationship between two women, the narrator Gyeongha and her friend Inseon, against the backdrop of a tragedy that is little known in France and still unhealed in South Korea. The cruel and bloody incident in question took place on the southern island of Jeju where, before the start of the Korean War, some 30,000 civilians were massacred by the South Korean army and police under the pretence of hunting down communist activists and sympathisers. Gyeongha and Inseon first met when Gyeongha was a journalist and Inseon a press photographer, and their friendship has grown stronger over the years. Having withdrawn to her family home on Jeju, Inseon, an only child, requests her friend’s help after losing two fingers in a work accident. It is the middle of winter, and the island is battered by snowstorms. Gyeongha, who suffers from migraines and nightmares, arrives at this remote house, built from stone and wood, to find her friend in a weakened, melancholic, tormented condition, her days brightened only by the presence of her white parrot and her cabinet-making work. With her strength waning, Inseon has even decided to draw up her will. Inseon tells her loyal friend about the documentary films she once made (about an old Manchurian woman with Alzheimer’s, or the sexual violence perpetrated by the Korean army in Vietnam), about her superstitious mother, her father’s experience as a political prisoner, her youth, her faded ambitions. She relays her mother’s account of the Jeju massacres, the victims of which included several members of her family, and describes the veil of silence that has fallen over this tragedy ever since. This is what led Inseon to make a documentary on the subject—a sort of inquest in which she faithfully records even the worst acts of violence, together with images of mass graves being unearthed. While exploring the labyrinthine depths of both collective and intimate memory (or amnesia), Han also excels in the attention she brings to everyday scenes: a cedar forest, the blustery wind, the colour of the sea, the way the slopes of a mountain resemble an unfolded fan, the smell of old rags, a handful of cranberries, a candle’s flickering flame, the greyish blue of dusk, the voice of a stranger—and the ever-present, dazzlingly white snow, which almost becomes an additional character in the novel, a vital element in this dialogue between two women and between the present and History. In short, Han evokes the beauty of the world, reaching out to it from the other side of this traumatic past and its memories. This strange and sometimes disturbing atmosphere, a kind of gentle, muffled space between fantasy and reality, gives rise to all sorts of images and dreams. Indeed, at one point, Gyeongha says that the sight of the swirling snow makes her feel like she has entered a new dimension; she seems to be fascinated by anything that can separate time from space. Impossibles Adieux is an entrancing work, one that casts a subtle but hypnotic spell. Though written in a different register, it calls to mind the best novels and writing of Yasunari Kawabata and W.G. Sebald. In its pages we find lessons in comradeship, friendship, an acknowledgement of what is kept and lost between generations, as well as the importance and burden of that transmission—and of love, which can also be a source of ‘terrible pain.’ Translated by Jesse Kirkwood Thierry ClermontAuthor, Long Island, Baby (Stock, 2022)Literary Critic, Le Figaro littéraire
by Thierry Clermont
[DANISH] She Sings with the Voices of the Dead
The publication of Kim Hyesoon’s Dødens selvbiografi (Autobiography of Death) in 2021 marked the first ever direct translation from Korean into Danish of a contemporary Korean poet. Translated in a collaboration among three individuals, this publication ventures along new paths within the art of translation while beautifully reflecting the polyphonic nature of the source text.
Autobiography of Death is a wildly experimental and linguistically dense work that moves beyond conventional literary boundaries, in both South Korean and Danish contexts. Because literary convention is created by men, Kim calls herself a poet without a mother tongue, and instead of working within the predefined structures that lead to colonization, violence, mutilation, and death—as well as the culture of silence that surrounds this very violence— Kim creates a different space in which the grotesque, banal, material, cruel, and humorous aspects of death all coexist. In this work, death is a process, not a state.
Autobiography of Death is a suite of forty-nine poems, representing the days before a spirit’s reincarnation according to Buddhist tradition. Originally published in 2016, Autobiography of Death was written in response to the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster in which 304 people lost their lives. In the introduction, we learn that the tragedy was largely the consequence of a deregulated industry in a society characterized by patriarchal violence and a pervasive culture of silence. This information provides a useful entryway, given that the average Danish reader will be familiar with neither the history or literature of South Korea in general, nor the specific circumstances inspiring the work.
However, the historical framework fades into the background when reading these excellently translated poems, not least because of their ferocity and sensory immediacy. The poems give voice to the dead and address the reader in the second person, a relatively rare literary device in Danish, and its usage creates an intimate space where the deceased is spoken to by an inconspicuous, lyrical “I.” “You” are known to someone who acknowledges that “you” are there, were there, and the poet sees “you,” even in death.
It is particularly striking that the deceased is not a singular unit, but a multitude of fragments that can exist in several places at once, dissolving and dispersing in the transition from life to death, as suggested by the Buddhist framework of the forty-nine days. Almost theatrical in nature, the poems possess an intricate materiality that is both repulsive and compelling, and a non-hierarchical relationship is established between “you” and the world. “You” can be found in multiple places at once, physically slipping into the material world in unexpected ways. An example is found in “Day 4,” where water “leans on you even more” when “you” try to lean on it. Death has a strong material presence (“you” are wearing a “gravel skirt,” eyes are “two sips of sea jelly, it’s very salty” in “Day 13” and “Day 14”), but the gruesome images do not constitute a relishing in zombie-like horror for its own sake. Instead, they demonstrate a willingness to look death in the eye and make room for the dark, the horrifying, and the sorrowful, and in so doing, grant the dead the space that the culture of silence denies them.
The poem’s speaker takes on the role of shaman; one who dwells in the intermediate space between worlds and allows the dead to speak. Grave, tragic experiences are conveyed with humor and intensity, leaving the reader with a wry smile but ill at ease.
In her afterword, translator Maja Lee Langvad notes that she found herself in a similar role when translating the poems. Professor Karin Jakobsen first provided a rough translation into Danish, and Langvad then conferred with artist Jeuno JE Kim, who speaks fluent Korean, to assemble and rewrite the poems in Danish. The translation process involved listening to her readings of the source text to reproduce its strong sense of orality. This approach aligns well with the work’s recitative quality that emphasizes rhythm and tone, repeating sentences with minimal alteration. The reader is whirled into a kind of trance, losing grip on linear progression, with only rhythm and alliteration to hold onto.
Some of the challenges the translator describes—the compactness of the Korean and the necessity to insert personal pronouns where Korean has none—are valuable additions, offering an expanded perspective on the difficulties of translation. However, the work stands firmly on its own in all its unruliness, its peculiarity, and its desire to give voice to the dead.
by Juliane Wammen
[INDONESIAN] Age of Deception
In Chang Kang-myoung’s thought-provoking novel, Pasukan Buzzer, readers are invited to explore the political world in a new digital era, filled with intrigue and hypocrisy, where an insidious PR firm deftly manipulates and distorts facts on social media. At its core, the story revolves around Team Aleph, an online PR start-up hired by the National Intelligence Service of South Korea. Their goal is to dismantle politically progressive internet forums and undermine the success of films that address controversies surrounding large corporations that neglect the lives of workers. Within this narrative, key characters like Sam-goong, Chatatkat, and 01810 emerge as integral members of Team Aleph, and form the so-called Buzzer troops. These characters use their persuasive writing skills to shape public opinion on the internet. Their services encompass orchestrating black campaigns by crafting negative comments on social media or web portals like Facebook, Naver, Daum, Ilbe and Jumda Café. Their expertise lies in the art of navigating and utilizing social media, opting for cloned accounts bearing real identities rather than anonymous personas. The storyline’s architecture and linguistic style employed by Chang are nothing short of exemplary. From start to finish, each facet of the narrative is meticulously crafted. The author vividly describes the essence and intricacies of each character, empowering readers to seamlessly follow the evolving trajectory of the plot. Moreover, the narrative is enlivened by the rich linguistic diversity of the Indonesian language, presenting an engaging, structured experience through its wide array of language and boundless imagination. Moving beyond the traditional dimensions of a novel, Pasukan Buzzer delves into the moral values carefully woven into its narrative. Of particular note are the ethical principles explored within the storyline, which offer profound insights into the complexities of human behavior. Chatatkat, for example, is a virtuoso at constructing compelling sentences and formulating strategic plans, while 01810, a proficient computer operator, quickly pinpoints the means to manipulate individuals through the labyrinth of the internet and social media. These characters prompt us to explore the question, ‘How far can human desires go, even if they end up harming communities?’ In addition to illustrating the dynamics of manipulation, Chang skilfully portrays the characters’ self-absorbed beliefs in their ability to shape the world according to their desires, something that began as a mere amusement. Unbeknownst to them, they become ensnared into the machinations of a clandestine organization, resolute in a playing a treacherous political game of eliminating all perceived threats by any means necessary. Rich with intrigue and innovative concepts, this narrative offers readers opportunity to reflect on the values of truth and goodness. This remarkable work not only cautions readers as they navigate the intricate web of social media but also emphasizes the multifaceted impact of Buzzer troops, contingent upon individual perspectives. Readers are encouraged to recognize the pivotal role played by the Buzzer squad in the context of real politics. Pasukan Buzzer kindles a spirit of critical thinking and introspection, provoking readers to contemplate the potential of a Buzzer squad as a force that spreads fake news and manipulates public opinion in their own lives.
by Agus Sulaeman
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