Compressed Madness

A few years ago , I used this p hr a s e b yDominican American writer Junot Díaz in aconference about Korean literature: “I grewup around Koreans, and let me tell you something, ifyou know anything about that national history, it’s likethe Caribbean in a day, compressed madness.”I told the audience that the Caribbean, and in a wayall of Latin America, suffered extreme changes after theSpanish arrived in those lands at the end of the fifteenthcentury: invasion, colonial oppression, racial mixing,genocide, slavery, civil war, revolutions, dictatorships,communism, anticommunism, diaspora. And finally,I threw out this question: “If Korea has lived throughsomething similar in much less time as Díaz noted, whereare the books that speak to such a complex history?” Ofcourse, there is no answer to this question. Or at least, notan exact answer in the form of a grocery list or a TV guide.Often, I imagine literature as a large group of islands.Sometimes readers are lucky enough to see the tidego down to the point where there is no longer watersurrounding the islands. It is exactly here that we realizeall of them in reality form a single piece of land. What isadmirable about publications like Korean Literature Nowis that they connect these islands that are books, and fora moment, we don’t need the tide to go down to see thewhole of literature, its beauty, its importance, and its truth.In this Spring 2018 issue dedicated to Koreantestimonial narratives, readers will encounter book-islandsby Korean authors who look at that “compressed madness”squarely in the eye.This issue reminds us why a work of fiction like TheNaked Tree by Park Wansuh or Human Acts by HanKang is often closer to the truth than any other historicalretelling. Poetry, which now in many parts of the worldseems only to speak of middle-class loneliness and vaincomplaints, has all the power to penetrate the surface ofthings: a seemingly mundane conversation between atorturer and his victim; the anguish of workers who borethe burden of creating the Korean economic miracle;the longing of a divided people living in a divided land;a ferry sinking that broke the heart of an entire nation.The Crucible by Gong Ji-young and One Person by KimSoom, which round out this issue, make it clear to us howoppression can also have serious sexual connotations thatinflict wounds not visible by the light of day. Literature isan opportunity to heal such wounds as this issue of KLNhopefully proves.Finally, KLN celebrates its tenth year of publicationin 2018. If this anniversary issue is anything to go by, weare in for another year of exciting themes and intriguingwriters.

Andrés Felipe Solano 

Author of five books, including 

Cementerios de neón (2017) & 

Korea, Notes from a Tightrope 

(Korean translation forthcoming)