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Category Archives: Book reviews: Literature in Korean

Sex, modernity and the Korean war

09-Jan-08
Ahn Junghyo: Silver Stallion - a novel of Korea First published 1986 Translation by Ahn Junghyo, Soho Press, 1990 Stern(9,g) As the book opens, we encounter a small village which is somehow untouched by the Korean war which seems to have passed them by. The old order, personified by Old Hwang, village elder, still survives. There are Reds in the nearby town. The presumption is that it will be from the communists that the main threat to the status quo (and the former yangban's authority) will come. But under the surface, change has already started. Hwang has only one son, and is already in debt to the local miller, representing the nouveaux riches, who actually owns his property. Hwang's power is a sham, ready to topple ...
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A monk’s tale

11-Dec-07
Kim Sung-dong: Mandala Translated by Ahn Jung-hyo Dongsu Munhaksa, 1990 Stern(10,g) A novel about the search for truth, and about the nature of corruption in religion. When Pobun takes his priestly vows, he undertakes not to kill, steal, have sex, lie, drink, wear ornaments, sing or dance, sleep in a comfortable bed, possess gold, or eat between meals. After six years of meditation and spiritual discipline he falls in with Chisan, a tengcho -- a fallen monk who breaks at least two of those ten commandments regularly and yet holds a strange fascination for Pobun. Chisan argues that detachment from the world is not the answer: If he indeed is not a god but a human being with enlightenment, how can Buddha keep smiling in ...
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Suicide Notes

28-Nov-07
Kim Young-ha: I have the right to destroy myself Originally published 1996 Translation by Kim Chi-young, Harcourt, 2007 Stern(8,g) An entertaining book to read, but somehow difficult to distill and digest. The narrator, who makes a macabre living as a self-employed suicide counselor, bizarrely seeks out clients whose exits he facilitates. A small and eccentric cast of characters includes an artist, his taxi-driving brother, the girl they're both having a relationship with and another girl who because of an unfortunate sexual experience is unable to drink water. The story is well-constructed, the text well-translated. This is Kim's first novel, and well worth a second read. Links Buy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk Kim Young-ha page at authortek
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Che in Verse launched

16-Oct-07
(Che in Verse, eds Gavin O'Toole & Georgina Jimenez, Aflame Books, 2007) Loyal readers who have followed this site from its early months may recall a question posed by a visitor about a year ago. Gavin O'Toole was working on assembling a compilation of poems from around the world about the great revolutionary Che Guevara. He'd heard that there was a couple of poems about him by Korean poets, and he needed to track them down in translation. After some help from LKL readers we confirmed Ko Un and Min Yeong as the prime candidates for inclusion, but the problem was -- the poems were only available in Korean. One quick email from LKL to Brother Anthony of Taizé via the Korean ...
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Kim Hunggyu: Understanding Korean Literature

11-May-07
ME Sharpe, 1997 Stern(10,g) Written in 1986 and expertly translated by Robert Fouser ten years later, this is a highly readable basic introduction to the wide variety of Korean literary forms. The scope of the work includes oral literature, literature written in Korean but using Chinese characters, and, perhaps controversially, literature written in classical Chinese, as well as the now mainstream literature written in Hangeul. Designed for the raw beginner who doesn't know a kasa from a shijo, the book can only afford to spend a few pages on each genre, but the pages are well-illustrated with examples, and a good bibliography at the end allows for further exploration. Interesting concluding chapters document the history of Korean literary criticism and, unusually, discuss some of ...
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Oh Jung-hee: The Bird

03-May-07
Telegram Books, 2007 Stern(3,g) Another of those enigmatic, slightly depressing modern Korean novels which causes you to have sympathy with the large number of Koreans who are turning to Japanese novels for their entertainment. Set during the mid 90s economic slump, the story chronicles the lives of a 12-year-old girl and her younger brother, growing up in poverty in a provincial Korean town. Their father, a violent construction worker, drove away their mother by his abusive behaviour, and does the same to a subsequent live-in girlfriend. They live in a rented room surrounded by peculiar neighbours: a fugitive from the law, an effeminate jazz clarinettist and his paralysed wife, and a married couple of which the man looks suspiciously like a woman. ...
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Choi In-hun: Reflections on a mask

02-Mar-07
Two Novellas, Reflections on a Mask and Christmas Carol, by Choi In-hun (최인훈) tr Stephen Moore & Shi Chung Park Moore Homa & Sekey Books, Dumont, New Jersey 2002. Overall: Stern(2,g). The novellas are discussed individually below. (1) Reflections on a Mask, first published 1960 Stern(4,g) By no means an easy book. The subject is a writer who has fought in the Korean war and finds it difficult to adjust back into daily life thereafter. He toys with writing a script for a ballet company; he has an unsatisfactory relationship with an artist, whose work he persistently destroys. Almost to find escape from his daily life he visits a strange American psychiatric institute where mysterious men in a side room listen to him narrating his dreams: his ...
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Chae Man-sik: Peace Under Heaven

11-May-06
English Translation: ME Sharpe, 1993. Originally published in 1938 Stern(8,g) An entertaining comedy chronicling a day or so in the life of a lecherous, foul-mouthed nouveau riche landlord. It captures a snapshot of Seoul under Japanese colonial occupation, but the Japanese impinge very little on the narrative. The book has larger than life characters -- the boisterous anti-hero Master Yun, surrounded by various female members of his extended family (either widowed or cast off by his male offspring); the feisty underage kisaeng who tries to extract the maximum as a price for her virtue; the reprobate male offspring. All great fun. Read this first, and then for a broader, deeper and darker picture of Seoul under the Japanese occupation read Three Generations.
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Harold Hakwon Sunoo: Life and Poems of Three Koreans

09-Apr-06
(Xlibris 2005) Stern(1,g) This is a print-to-order book, rather than one sponsored by a major publishing house. I would have thought that would make it cheaper, but at £14 for a 104 page paperback it's on the pricey side. And Sunoo is a man seriously in need of a proof-reader and editor. Even a standard version of Word might help iron out some of the errors of both spelling and syntax, but maybe he turned off the red and green wiggly lines because they got too distracting. Stylistically, one can make allowances and tolerate a few bits of Konglish, and even enjoy (as a change from the usual polite style to be found in history and literature books) some of the colourful ...
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Hwang Sok-yong: The Guest

07-Apr-06
(Seven Stories, 2005) Stern(10,g) The Guest of the title is an unwelcome foreigner: originally applied to smallpox, it is used by extension to cover the cultural imports of communism and Christianity. The theme of the book is that until the ghosts of the past are allowed to tell their story they cannot be laid to rest. The story centres on an incident during the Korean war, in the north, where the divisions in time of civil strife led to atrocities: and the atrocities, blamed in the official narrative on the Americans in order to conceal the real truth and thus make the memories more bearable, are in fact all the more horrific because they are committed by Korean on Korean, neighbour on ...
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Yom Sang-seop: Three Generations

19-Mar-06
(Archipelago, 2005). First published in Korean in 1931 and revised in 1948.Stern(9,g) Chronicles the lives of an extended wealthy family in Japanese-occupied Seoul. The old order gradually fades, the vultures descend for the pickings, while an underground of nationalists and socialists struggle to make a difference. Recommended. Available from Seoulselection. See also review in Complete Review. A very quick footnote. The grandfather's second wife in this book is referred to as "the Suwon woman". I took this to be intentionally insulting (she is, after all, a nasty piece of work). However, on reading The Guest by Hwang Sok-yong I found an explanatory note (on p16) that traditionally, women who married into the family from a different area were referred to by their place ...
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Lee Seung-u: The Reverse Side of Life

18-Feb-06
(Peter Owen, 2005) Stern(7,g) A partly autobiographical novel exploring the life story of a prominent Korean writer growing up in the second half of the twentieth century (originally published in 1992).
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Yi Chong-jun: Your paradise

17-Feb-06
(Green Integer, 2004) Stern(6,g) A puzzling story about the struggles of successive managers of a leper colony to improve the lot of the lepers. I think the Complete Review shares my puzzlement. One of the best-selling novels of 20th Century Korean literature, originally published in 1976.
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Yi Mun-yol: the Poet

17-Feb-06
(Harvill 1995) Stern(8,g) Novel based on the life of a 19th century poet, Kim Sakkat, exploring his development as an artist against the backdrop of the insurrection by Hong Kyong-rae in the north-west. I was reminded of this book when watching the Im-Kwon Taek film Chihwaseon because of its storyline of a wandering artist. (First published 1992). See also review in Complete Review
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Virtuous Women - three classic Korean novels

16-Feb-06
Richard Rutt & Kim Chong-un (tr), (Royal Asiatic Society, Korea branch, 1974) Stern(7,g) Three traditional stories about female endurance. The classic Chunhyang, the true story of Queen Inyhon, and the Nine Cloud Dream. Each of the novels has a useful introduction. Essential and pleasurable reading.
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