One of the publisher’s most recent of its national anthologies, The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories provides portrayals of the country in the years 1905 to 1945, when the nation was under imperial Japanese rule, as well as glimpses of life in the Republic of Korea (ROK, aka South Korea), which came into existence in 1948 in the zone of US military occupation one month before the establishment in September that year of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, aka North Korea) in the Soviet zone.
Korea in 1905, when the Japanese made the nation its protectorate, was a land where a few government officials, military officers, and landed gentry ruled over an agrarian nation of impoverished tenant farmers. Japan governed Korea for 40 years by cultivating Korean officials, including military officers and policemen, largely left the rural gentry in place, and fostered a newborn class of native capitalists. Some fortunate Koreans attended the imperial university in Keijo (the city known today as Seoul) or sought higher education in Japan. Some grew rich in commerce and industry. Meanwhile, most Koreans continued to live in poverty in the countryside.
The earlier short stories in this collection reflect the realities of Korean life within the Japanese Empire, written, as they were, at the time. In author Kim Yu-jong’s “Spicebush Blossoms” (1936), a tenant farmer’s son suffers abuse from the landlord’s daughter, frustrated that the rigid class divide keeps her from him. The main character in Chae Man-sik’s “A Man Called Hungbo” (1939) is a handyman at a primary school run by a Japanese principal.
Reflecting life for Korean intellectuals under Japanese rule is Pak Tae-won’s “A Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist” (1934). Twenty-six years old, still unmarried and without a stable career, despite having gone to university in Tokyo, Kubo is a cosmopolitan child of empire. He knows English as well as Japanese, is familiar with Western opera, and can recite from memory the poetry of Ishikawa Takubo and Sato Haruo. His circle of associates and friends are birds of a feather, quoting André Gide and opining on James Joyce’s “new experiment”, the novel Ulysses.
The story follows Kubo one day as he drifts about Keijo, uncertain what to do with his life. While going about the city, Kubo sees or thinks of many of the modern city’s landmarks, including the Governor-General Building, from which the peninsula is governed, Keijo Station, the Bank of Chosen (the Japanese rendition of Korea) and the Washin Department Store. Among the memories that haunt him are those of a fine young woman—one familiar with European novelists, Japanese writers, and Hollywood movies—whom he let slip away due to his lack of direction and resolve.
This anthology’s ROK stories reflect Korea’s division upon liberation in 1945; the emergence of two rival regimes in 1948; and the Korean War (1950-1953), civil warfare that soon grew into a war that the United States and its camp waged in Korea against the Soviet Union and China. In the years following the 1953 armistice—without a peace treaty, the two Koreas remain today technically at war—Koreans in the south went through years of military dictatorship (1961-1998) and a forced march of development, leading to Seoul’s joining in 1996 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, aka the international “rich man’s club”). Today, the ROK brand enjoys worldwide popularity for its Korean Wave (Hallyu) pop culture.
After liberation from Japan, Korean class tensions led to violent acts before and during the Korean War. Man-sok, the main character in Cho Chong-nae’s “Land of Exile” (1981) is a poor man who, as a member of the local people’s committee, exacts bloody revenge upon members of the Ch’oe clan, arrogant landed gentry, once DPRK troops overrun his area.
The three men hoisted their bamboo spears and lunged at Elder Ch’oe’s grandson, who was tied to the trunk of the pine. Screams, long screams, spread forth – screams that seemed to tear through the mountains, rend the skies, rip open the very earth.
Man-sok “listened to the drawn-out screams with a pleasure that thrilled every joint in his body.”
The sense of pleasure was, in fact, one of sweet revenge. All the sorrow and pain and mortification they had all known over generations of slavery, and that he himself had endured for his twenty-five years, was slowly, slowly washed away by that thrilling pleasure.
The retreat of the North Korean army later in the war would give the local clan their chance to exact their own violent retribution. Cho’s short story reflects the horror of Korea’s civil war and class antagonisms. A story that shows what ROK society gained and lost in the rush to development is Yi Mun-yol’s “The Old Hatter” (1979). An ancient clan’s quiet town and traditional market fairs gave way over the years to modernization, with roving peddlers replaced by modern businessmen with more money than the old aristocracy had. The narrator understands the appeal of such developments to the common people:
Changes were especially rapid in and around the marketplace, where the inhabitants were mostly descendants of our clan’s bond servants and hired hands and therefore had little reason to cherish the old and every reason to welcome the new.
A traditional rural society, sustained for centuries by slaves, servants, and tenant farmers, gave way to a modern country of paved roads and citizens. Yet, the narrator cannot help but mourn the loss of the area’s natural beauty to industrial pollution and the end of his nation’s “spiritual heritage”.
What declined first was the old learning that for centuries had nurtured my ancestors’ minds. It had given my ancestors everything but can give us nothing now. The books, which every house is said to have had at least five cartloads of, were scattered and discarded by their owners’ descendants, and the fragrance of Chinese ink has long departed from the men’s quarters. The village sodang, which used to resound with the voices of children reciting passages from the elementary classics, is now piled high with dust.
Finally, some stories in this book’s anthology show contemporary ROK society. Despite Seoul’s triumphal entry into the OECD and the Korean Wave’s appeal to global audiences, these stories reflect aspects of such current issues as feminism and youth unemployment. As noted literary scholar Kwon Yong-min notes in his excellent introduction to this book, South Korea as a society suffers the OECD’s highest rate of suicide, a birth rate below the replacement level, and a high rate of divorce.
The French novelist Stendhal cited at the start of one chapter in his tale The Red and the Black the Savoyard writer Saint-Réal’s definition of a novel as “a mirror that one carries along the road,” reflecting what one passes on the way. Such a metaphor holds true, I believe, for the short story as well. The short stories in this collection, written by a Who’s Who of Korean literature, are not only mirrors that reflect Korean realities but excellent works of literature as well. Sin Kyong-suk’s “House on the Prairie” (1996), for example, is an outstanding tale guaranteed to give readers a chill.
This book has much to recommend it. Bruce Fulton, professor of Korean literature at the University of British Columbia, has worked with his wife for decades to translate many Korean works into English for appreciative readers around the world. The authors selected for this anthology include both literary giants—Hwang Sun-won, Cho Chong-nae, and Yi Mun-yol among them—and such interesting relative newcomers as Choe Yun and Chon Un-yong. There is one only selection from the DPRK, an excerpted chapter from Hwang Chin-i (2002), Hong Suk-chung’s novel of 16th century Korea. Having more stories from North Korea would have made the postwar selections more representative of Korean literary production throughout the peninsula since Liberation.
In this recent anthology, Penguin has put together an excellent book. In addition to the introduction, the editor’s note, and the stories themselves, the provision of a chronology, a list of further reading, notes on Korean name order and pronunciation, glossary, endnotes, and a map of the Korean Peninsula makes this book a truly fine collection of Korean stories.
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