From the languages chosen (English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese) it is clear that the publishers intended to cast a very wide net. However, with the exception of the odd polyglot, only a small portion of the book will be accessible to any given reader. Although it seems an odd strategy from a marketing perspective, it is a clear affirmation of the high regard in which the story is held.

‘When Buckwheat Flowers Bloom’ follows the travails of an ageing market vendor by the name of Heo Saengwon as he struggles to scratch out a living as a member of a ragtag coterie of itinerant hucksters. The story opens with the misery of a failed market day in a nameless village. Neither Heo nor his two companions (Jo Seondal and Dong-i) have fared well, but rather than strike out for the next village, they elect to drown their sorrows at the local watering hole. It is here that a row erupts over a young(ish) barmaid who has taken the fancy of the luckless Heo Saengwon. Old and pock-marked, it is clear to all (including Heo) that he has little chance of winning the girl. As the spirits flow, the weight of this intelligence causes him to become belligerent to those around him, especially toward the much younger Dong-i who appears to be making some headway with the barmaid in question.

Tempers eventually cool, and the three men set out in caravan for the next village where they hope to have better luck. En route Heo relates the story of his one and only romance, which took place some 25 years before. In strikingly poetic terms, he describes how he came upon a lonely young woman sheltering in a watermill and how they took comfort in one another’s bodies among the profusion of blossoming buckwheat flowers.

It is these passages that likely inspired the publishers to choose this particular story from the more than seventy written by Lee Hyo-Seok during his lifetime. Although the techniques seem a little dated and the outcome entirely predictable, there is still pleasure to be derived from the quality of the sentences, which – according to the foreword – are sure to leave ‘deep and indelible impressions in the mind of the reader.’

Image taken from www.koreatimes.co.kr

Pak’s precocious intellect surfaced early in life and flourished throughout her school days. Upon graduating, she was granted a place in the Korean literature department of Seoul National University, a rare accomplishment for a woman of the time.  Sadly, she was forced to withdraw from the school at the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. In addition to putting an end to her studies, the War took a huge personal toll on Pak, claiming (in one way or another) nearly all of closest family members. One of her brothers died, and she became separated from her mother and other sibling, both of whom were captured and taken to the North.

The War and its aftermath feature prominently in her work to the extent that her writing is often referred to as being representative of pundhan munhak, which roughly translates as ‘the literature of national division’.  However, as one would expect of a writing career that spanned almost four decades, her choice of subject matter evolved over time. Pak’s more recent works honed in on the institution of the family, and – more specifically – women’s roles within it. Her writing demonstrates a fierce opposition to patriarchy and the other forces that conspire to hold women back from achieving their full potential.  Perhaps her most impassioned portrayal of the plight of women came in her 1993 novel The Dreaming Incubator, in which a woman is forced to endure multiple abortions in the hope that she will someday give birth to a male heir. Her final book was a collection of essays, entitled Roads Not Taken Are More Beautiful.

Perhaps to a greater extent than that of her contemporaries, Pak’s work permits readers an unobstructed view of what it means to be Korean. History, while never the main focus, is always there, informing the text and shedding light on the actions of the characters. The voice that delivered these insights was utterly unique and never predictable. Her shadow will loom over Korean literature for many years to come.

To read a review of Pak Wanseo’s Three Days in That Autumn, click here.

Elton LaClare is thirty-five years-old, originally from Saskatchewan, Canada, and he has been living away from home for approximately twelve years. He studied and worked in England for three-and-a-half years; he spent two years teaching in Japan; and during the past six-and-a-half years he has been living in Gwangju.

For many years Elton considered himself a ‘teacher for now’ and thought that he would eventually transition into another career. But as time passed, Elton became more and more interested in teaching, and he soon came to think of it as his vocation.

That’s not to say it’s his only interest though.

A few weeks ago I had an opportunity to ask Elton some questions about his work and he was very happy to answer them for me.  He told me about his relationship with books generally; his relationship with Korean books more specifically; how reading Korean literature has improved his understanding of Korea and Korean people; and he also suggested a couple of books which you might consider tracking down and reading for yourself.

“After years of being told what to read by my teachers, I began to explore literature on my own. This is when my interest shifted toward contemporary literary fiction: I have a soft spot for British and Colonial novels, but my interest ranges pretty far.

“I would have to say that reading Korean literature has done a lot to enhance my understanding of both Koreans and Korean culture. I'd read a couple of non-fiction books intended to help expats adjust to Korean life, but I found that these were full of generalizations and not particularly helpful at revealing the underlying motivations behind why Koreans do the things that they do. For me, fiction has done a far better job of helping me to understand what I see around me. It is especially illuminating with regards to relationships in the family as well as among friends and colleagues. I suppose the experience of reading Korean literature has helped me toward a more open-minded view of Korea and Koreans.

“I’ve read many books and liked some and disliked others, but several definitely do stand out.

In Tower of Ants Choi In-Ho offers up a strangely detached central character – a man with seemingly no connection to society aside from his dead-end job as an advertising copywriter. Despite the fact that he is endlessly surrounded by his fellow drones, the story rarely reveals him in conversation with anyone other than the nameless women he drags home for meaningless sexual congress. The rabbit warren of apartments in which he resides serves only to emphasize the paradox of being alone among a crowd.

Encroaching on his isolation, however, is a colony of ants seemingly bent upon taking possession of the meager space he’s managed to carve out for himself. Although the man employs a variety of stratagems to rid himself of the pesky intruders, all are to no avail. Indeed, the ants seem to proliferate under his persecution, and it isn’t long before he is forced to entertain other options.

Like a number of the author’s other stories, Tower of Ants hones in on the theme of submission. Struggle is often regarded as an assertion of one’s humanity. Not so for the characters who populate the fictional world of Choi In-Ho. For these unlucky creatures, the cost of freedom is nothing short of absolute surrender.

Tower of Ants is the type of story that not only invites reflection on the meaning of existence, it insists upon it. The allegorical dimension is clear from the outset, and because of this it’s highly unlikely that any reader would to take the character’s struggle against the ants at face value. That said, however, there is room for differences of opinion as to what the outcome of that struggle is intended to tell us.

            Elton LaClare

Both of the stories contained in Gong’s book, Human Decency, feature single professional women – writers, no less – struggling to find meaning in a changing society. The tension between honoring the sacrifices of the past and longing for a future in which people are no longer bound by tradition is evident throughout both narratives, though it is arguably more forcefully put in the title story.

In ‘Human Decency’ we are presented with a narrator who is all but haunted by the betrayal of her activist past implied by her decision to accept a position with a woman’s magazine owned by her uncle.  Her internal conflict is played out in a dispute with her editor as to which of a pair of pending articles should be featured in the magazine’s next issue. The articles, both interviews, represent opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the type of individual they profile. On the one hand, there’s Gwon Ogyu, an intellectual and orchestrator of student demonstrations who spent the better part of the 70s and 80s as a political prisoner, while on the other there’s Yi Min-ja, an artist and advocate of spiritual meditation whose privileged background has allowed her to live much of her adult life abroad.

Although the narrator professes an aversion to the likes of Yi Min-ja, whom she feels has shirked her duty to assist in the establishment of a civil society, she cannot help but view her as a model of how to exist outside of matrimony and the conventional roles of women. Her various rationalizations for the attraction she feels toward Yi give rise to the bizarre notion that attempting to improve one’s lot in life, trying new things and being happy are, in effect, renunciations of one’s Korean identity.

As with the narrator of ‘Human Decency’, the central character of Gong’s second tale, ‘Dreams,’ is afflicted by a sense of loss that no amount of time seems able to dispel. Having lived through the activism of the 1980s, she finds herself stumbling toward an uncertain future – one devoid of the moral certainties that had sustained her through her student days. Along with a pair of old comrades (a failed composer and out of work movie director) she embarks on a weekend road trip. Although the ostensible reason for the excursion is to do some fishing, it soon becomes apparent that the three have convened out of a shared sense of hopelessness. By the end of the story, it is clear that the ‘dreams’ of the title refer not to hopes for the future but nightmares that enable the past to endlessly recur.

The stories contained in Human Decency offer us characters who are not so much broken as incomplete. Stripped of their idealism, they cannot fully come to terms with who they are or what they want to be. The unintended casualty of democracy, it seems, has been the sense of purpose of an entire generation of activists. Although this irony is no doubt lost on some, her body of work makes it clear that the same cannot be said of Gong Ji-young.

                Elton LaClare