nanoomi

Some time ago I wrote here bemoaning, or maybe just examining, the lack of humor in translated Korean literature. I wondered if something was hidden behind the drapes of translation? I wondered if there was something about Korean literature’s national nature that made it focus on serious subjects? I wondered if it was based on the inherent difficulty in translating humor, particularly that above the level of slapstick? I also wondered if Korean literature expressed humor differently (this is a topic that goes back and forth on the internet and which about at least one pair of Korean academics has weighed in on in the affirmative).

Yun Dong-ju is often known as a poet and patriot. He was arrested by the Japanese more than once, and was a firm believer in conserving important elements of Korean culture during Japanese colonialism. There is some suspicion that his death might have been the result of Japanese medical experimentation (191).

The Heavens, the Wind, The Stars and Poetry is an omnibus type book. It contains 120 poems, a short biography, and excellent frontispiece photo, a 19 page analysis of his poetry, and an interesting bit of “research” into the religious basis of his work.
But also included in the book are four short stories, of which three are very short. Not surprising for a poet, the works are full of allusion and symbols, with nature taking a very high rank in the list of allusions and symbols. This can be pretty easily noted just by looking at the titles of his short stories. Yun is a complicated read as well, hopping from thing to thing with little notice and employing a writing style that is in some ways reminiscent of the surrealism of Yi Sang and the absurdity of Pak Min-gyu. That’s good territory to be in, if you don’t know the authors. Read the full story

By F N Souza

With support from the Korea Foundation, the Embassy of India and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations present an exhibition, “Kalpana – Masterpieces of Figurative Indian Contemporary Paintings” at the Korea Foundation Cultural Center from 28 May to 11 June 2010. 

The exhibition titled Kalpana (meaning imagination or fantasy in Hindi) celebrates masterly expressions of the figurative arts as seen in the last 100 years through the works of 14 of India’s best known painters. It displays a diverse range of works by artists who represent different regions of India and also displays their unique styles. The exhibition features paintings of Jamini Roy who was deeply influenced by the Kalighat Pat folk art style of Bengal, the distinctive depictions of rural India of Amrita Shergil, the Hindu mythological themes of A. Ramachandran, the bold works of M.F. Hussain who has been called the “Picasso of India,” and the feminist concerns of Arpana Caur.
Curated by India’s eminent artist Anjolie Ela Menon, the exhibition Kalpana sets a high standard because of its innovative use of excellent reprints of original canvases.

The exhibition is open from 10 a.m to 6 p.m. from Monday to Saturday, except Wednesday when it is open from 10 a.m. to 9. p.m. Admission is free.

UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression 

The Press Conference is Monday, May 17th at 10:30am on the 19th floor of the Korea Press Center Building, Taepyongno-1Ga, Jung-Gu, Seoul.

Yesterday, in a different venue, La Rue spoke quite a bit about the importance of the internet and bloggers, calling them important “reporters” and “the poor man’s press”. He spoke about the need for Korea to be an example for Asia and the world in this regard because of the high interconnectivity. 

La Rue said the he was particularly interested in visiting Korea because of Internet issues. He said the Korean government had a commitment not only to protect individual’s right to freedom of expression but also to promote it. 

The Monday press conference is open to all. La Rue said he would take questions on anything. A reporter from the Korea Herald in the audience asked if he would discuss Samsung’s suit against Breen. He said he would. 

I wonder if any English language and/or Korean language bloggers will show up to cover this press conference. It might be a good chance to bring up some important issues (people seem to be feeling a chill lately) and to reaffirm the rights of citizens and non-citizens to express themselves on blogs. 

There have been several examples of foreigners having their livelihoods or their visa status threatened because of an opinion expressed on a blog. 

The last time Korea had a UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion in town was 15 years ago… This may be an ideal opportunity to address some important issues. 

(NOTE: This is the first post in a three part series. The second post is here, and the third post is here)

Why it is that Korean literature translation is unheard of outside Korea? It is because the translated products often end up in libraries around the world and collect dust on the shelves.

The problem

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different result.” Whoever said that first must have

"Around and round we go"

foreseen what struggle Korean literature in translation has gone through in marketing itself. Every year, KLTI and Daesan select and award aspirant translators. Every year, some good “Korean Classics” are translated into many different languages. Every year, the translated works fail to find the target readers. Years have gone by, yet Korean literature has not reached anywhere near a bestseller list. We can probably pin-point the areas (there are so many, particularly marketing!) on which Korean literature translation business needs to make effort. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have been worked on already. Nothing, however, will change and make a maximum impact if those implementing the change don’t step out of the box and stop the insanity.

Are Koreans to be blamed for this process of repeating the same process and expecting a different result? The answers are ‘no’ and ‘yes.’ I reversed the order of the phrase on purpose because I strongly believe they are not to be blamed for it. although now it is time to change.

40 Years Ago: Shacks?

An anecdote on why I say ‘no,’ when I ask if Koreans are foolish for repeating processes. The other day, my family went to see Cirque du Soleil (A modern acrobatic show). During the intermission, we went outside the tent and played. My son enjoyed the time outside immensely because the magnitude, intricacy and artistry of the show was, in fact, too scary for a 2 ½ year old boy. So, he played around, running everywhere between people. Just before the second half of the show began, we realized that he needed to have his diaper changed. We promptly got in the line for a bathroom designated for family and the handicapped. Although lines for other gentleman/lady bathrooms were long, people did not line up or took advantage of the family/handicapped bathrooms. My wife (Korean) quietly made an appreciative comment about the other fans, and I (Korean-American) agreed that this would be highly unlikely if it were in Korea.

Some might ask, “When will Koreans learn to be as courteous and orderly as the citizens of an advanced country?” But this question would be based on uninformed assumptions (NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: It would also be slightly outdated – having lived in Korea for two years, I have noticed that it is relatively courteous and orderly, and becoming more so every day).

Efficiency is an everyday mantra in Korea. Things need to be done quickly and most efficiently. White collar workers often remain at work way past their quitting time to get more work done. If not, they are often penalized for leaving work on time. Buses and subway trains need to run on time despite the chronic traffic problems. Get more manpower to complete jobs that seem impossible. Create miracles of the Han River around the world. Korea was able to secure its foothold in the world by finding a way to get things done. Create results. Right?

Returning to my point, are we to blame Koreans for “poor manners” in this era of globalization if they take advantage of bathrooms which are not as frequently occupied as others when all the training and life-long education is geared to efficiency and getting your job done at all cost?

No. It is perfectly logical, because it is the approach that has worked.

By the same token, are we to blame Koreans for working like a well-oiled machine in producing translation works and

A Vicious Cycle

scattering them around the world, albeit libraries? Wait a minute….libraries are places where people go to borrow books, right? If we get books there people will come and read them! Hello, marketing 101! Result produced. Another job done. Finito. Give him more work!

Today, the answer is “yes”

Years have gone by, and the results still gather dust in libraries. Korean literature is still practically unheard of in international markets. Koreans may not be blamed for this minimal market impact, but it is still their responsibility, for no other people will promote Korean literature for them.

What will it take to put a stop to this insanity—doing the same thing over and over and over….?

Or..

NEXT: JUST DO IT! (differently)

Ed Park

In a post long ago (and now a follow up here,) I briefly laid out some of the historical reasons that Korean modern literature is relatively agency-less; that its characters react to society rather than the Western style model of spurning society, or going it alone. As a result of this model, the anti-social hero is almost completely missing from Korean literature and the tragic hero is even less evident. Even in works in which the hero does try to go it alone, the results and even the attempts themselves, are often indifferent in nature. The “lone” hero is normally trying with all his or her might to return to the bosom of society, and often their attempts at going solo, seem tepid at best.

Unfortunately, in that first post, I didn’t clearly lay out the literary evidence supporting my claim about agency, heroism, and Korean literature. In this post I will return to that, and briefly sketch a historical analysis of Korean modern fiction (with one classical example). Then I will suggest the theoretical underpinnings of this reality, split into several posts.

The exemplar classical version of the Korean hero as non anti-social, non tragic, might be Hong Gildong in which the main character does run away from his family. Of course he is chased out by social pressures (which operate through his father) and in the end of course returns to his family. He is by no means a tragic hero and even though he temporarily deserts his family and then culture, all the while is fighting within and against it in order to make it better. In addition, his greatest accomplishment in his role of “hero” is reconstitute the state he is missing, but in a new land.

In modern fiction of the colonial period, the same tendency occurs – heroes are few, and even the “tragic” ones (Yi Sang’s The Wings) are more confused and oppressed than anything else. What heroes there are, tend to be nationalized ones. As Korean.net sums the first decade of the 20th century:

Many of the early novels at this time were focused on enlightening the people for the new era, leading to the publication of many biographical novels such as Aeguk-buin-jeon (Tale of the Patriotic Lady, 1907), by Jang Ji-yeon, Eulji Mundeok (General Eulji Mundeok, 1908) by Shin Chae-ho, and Geumsu Hoe-uirok (Conference of Animals, 1908) by An Guk-seon.

In the latter part of that decade sin-seoseol, or the “new novel,” did begin to introduce a bit of “western” approach to literature, but whatever opening that might have represented was immediately shut by the historical fact that Japan colonized Korea.

For the next 38 years, all fiction revolved around the nation and while heroes may have been loners, or even victims, they were all essentially manifestations of the Korean national will for independence.

The same was essentially true after independence and the Korean War. Literature focused on the trauma of social order collapsed, whether that order be the collapse of traditional farming life, the horrors of a nation split in two (separation literature – pundan munhak), or the injustices of rapid and forced industrialization. Alienation features heavily in these stories, but in general the alienation is the actual “star” of the book, and the character is only reacting to it. As an example, Choe In-hun’s Gwangjang (The Plaza, 1960) portrayed the torture, rootlessness and frustrations of a symbolic intellectual, Yi Myeong Jun, caught between “the plaza” of North Korea and the “back-room” of South Korea. Yi can’t deal with this reality, decides to emigrate, but in the first steps of that process, kills himself. He can’t stand to stay in Korea, neither can he stand to leave it. This hero is not anti-social, in fact it is his state outside of society that drives him to suicide.

Even in a book as tragic as Cho Se-hui’s The Dwarf, in which the main character arguably does make an error based on hubris, attempting to live as a ‘normal’ man, the stakes are small and in the end it is the inevitable asocial status of the dwarf that drives him to his death. The image of the dwarf, perched on a factory chimney, attempting to “reach” the moon with a paper airplane or small ball, before plummeting to his death, is indeed a tragic one, but it is one arrived at by social mechanisms rather than as a result of any particular action of the dwarf.

Other works that might lend themselves to an “agency” reading include The Last of Hanako, by, Choe Yun, or I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Kim Young-ha. Yet on close inspection both seem to fall away from agency, although I’ll have to think more carefully about Kim’s work. In any case, I would be interested in a reader pointing me to a Korean work of modern fiction that features a conventional, Aristotelian tragic hero, or evidence of radical agency. Until then, the following quote from “Asian Info” will give a hint as to where this blog will find the basis for Korea’s “anti-hero” literature:

Early Korean literature was heavily influenced by Shamanism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The early literature, which began as an oral tradition, depicted a love of nature and man and held that man was a part of nature. Good was rewarded and evil was punished and values like loyalty to the King, filial piety, respect for one’s elders, true friendship and chastity were emphasized.

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 25 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul

In the volume Hong Gildong the PLKL pairs two stories by Seo Hajin, each based on a previous literary creation. The first story is Hong Gildong, based on a classic Korean story, the Tale of Gildong. The second story is The Woodcutter and the Nymph which is, as the book-cover puts it, “a modern retelling of the well-known Korean folktale “Umamukun-gwa-seonnyeo.” In both cases, however Seo departs radically from the original text. Also, in both cases the story is that of a person who feels radically disconnected from the world around them.

The historical Tale of Gildong is the story of Hong, a talented, but semi-bastard, child who discovers his own father’s plan to murder him. This drives Hong to a life of crime in which he bedevils the entire Korean state. One of Hong’s tricks, for he is a magician as well as thief, is to reconstitute straw into doppelgangers of himself. These simulacra then run off to the various provinces of Korea where they act as Hong himself, performing various acts of mischief and rebellion. Hong eventually recreates a dream-state, with himself at its head, and reunites happily with his family. Seo takes one particular aspect of the older tale, the creation of a man of straw, and recasts it in the mind of a man who is so alienated from life that he doesn’t want to commit suicide only for fear that suicide would define him – he wants absolute nothingness, and he sees the creation of his own straw replacement as a means to this end.

His life is rather bleak, he lives with a wife who is prone to voicing complaints that echo: “Do you know what I hate most about being a woman? When I’m not hungry and I have to cook for somebody else. And another thing – when I don’t want to have sex and feel I have to.” He begins a series of interrupted meetings with a psychiatrist, and also to behave in self-destructive fashion. The first step of this is to semi-intentionally drive into a sobriety check-point after drinking. As a result of this, he embarks on a love affair which give his life temporary, but illusory, meaning. When this affair collapses, he goes with it. At the end of tale, he steps into traffic to attempt to “meet” his straw doppelganger. Seo begins the last passage of the story with a lovely bit of prose:

“Here I am, growing lighter, ever lighter. Here I am, scattering like straw. I laughed, laughed when something dull bang (sic) into me. I laughed at the tiny shards of light. I laughed and laughed as though all my blood would flow out of me.

It’s a well done piece of work.

The historical tale of the Woodcutter and the Nymph is one of love and separation. Also, kind of about the thick-headedness of the Woodcutter, who repeatedly fails to follow instructions (blinded by love, of course), and thus twice loses his heavenly love. Seo’s The Woodcutter and the Nymph diverges rather radically from this, although perhaps her reference is to the fact that many states are changed in the historical tale.

In Seo’s version, the narrator Jisu is pregnant, perhaps a bit un-moored, and her husband who is typically healthy as an ox, gets ill. But two time-lines, perhaps more, are in effect as flashbacks tell the semi-tragic story of the beginning of the marriage. Jisu, like the unnamed narrator of Hong Gildong, is adrift. There is a lovely vacation scene in which Jisu’s reaction to a massage drives home the message that she is without reference to ‘normal’ life. She floats in and out of scenes, ostensibly from her life, but ones that seem nearly impossible to stitch together narratively as it floats from event to event, and country to country.

At the end, Seo returns to the historical tale as Jisu, like the original woodcutter, is left clutching at the hopes of heaven, but without any real hope.

This book can be found at Seoul Selection and often at Kyobo Books. It is available online through the usual channels.

More reviews available at www.ktlit.com

In a post long ago, I briefly laid out some of the historical reasons that Korean modern literature is relatively agency-less; that its characters react to society rather than the Western style model of spurning society, or going it alone. As a result of this model, the anti-social hero is almost completely missing from Korean literature and the tragic hero is even less evident. Even in works in which the hero does try to go it alone, the results and even the attempts themselves, are often indifferent in nature. The “lone” hero is normally trying with all his or her might to return to the bosom of society, and often their attempts at going solo, seem tepid at best.

Unfortunately, in that first post, I didn’t clearly lay out the literary evidence supporting my claim about agency, heroism, and Korean literature. In this post I will return to that, and briefly sketch a historical analysis of Korean modern fiction (with one classical example). Then I will suggest the theoretical underpinnings of this reality, split into several posts.

The exemplar classical version of the Korean hero as non anti-social, non tragic, might be Hong Gildong in which the main character does run away from his family. Of course he is chased out by social pressures (which operate through his father) and in the end of course returns to his family. He is by no means a tragic hero and even though he temporarily deserts his family and then culture, all the while is fighting within and against it in order to make it better. In addition, his greatest accomplishment in his role of “hero” is reconstitute the state he is missing, but in a new land.

In modern fiction of the colonial period, the same tendency occurs – heroes are few, and even the “tragic” ones (Yi Sang’s The Wings) are more confused and oppressed than anything else. What heroes there are, tend to be nationalized ones. As Korean.net sums the first decade of the 20th century:

Many of the early novels at this time were focused on enlightening the people for the new era, leading to the publication of many biographical novels such as Aeguk-buin-jeon (Tale of the Patriotic Lady, 1907), by Jang Ji-yeon, Eulji Mundeok (General Eulji Mundeok, 1908) by Shin Chae-ho, and Geumsu Hoe-uirok (Conference of Animals, 1908) by An Guk-seon.

In the latter part of that decade sin-seoseol, or the “new novel,” did begin to introduce a bit of “western” approach to literature, but whatever opening that might have represented was immediately shut by the historical fact that Japan colonized Korea.

For the next 38 years, all fiction revolved around the nation and while heroes may have been loners, or even victims, they were all essentially manifestations of the Korean national will for independence.

The same was essentially true after independence and the Korean War. Literature focused on the trauma of social order collapsed, whether that order be the collapse of traditional farming life, the horrors of a nation split in two (separation literature – pundan munhak), or the injustices of rapid and forced industrialization. Alienation features heavily in these stories, but in general the alienation is the actual “star” of the book, and the character is only reacting to it. As an example, Choe In-hun’s Gwangjang (The Plaza, 1960) portrayed the torture, rootlessness and frustrations of a symbolic intellectual, Yi Myeong Jun, caught between “the plaza” of North Korea and the “back-room” of South Korea. Yi can’t deal with this reality, decides to emigrate, but in the first steps of that process, kills himself. He can’t stand to stay in Korea, neither can he stand to leave it. This hero is not anti-social, in fact it is his state outside of society that drives him to suicide.

Even in a book as tragic as Cho Se-hui’s The Dwarf, in which the main character arguably does make an error based on hubris, attempting to live as a ‘normal’ man, the stakes are small and in the end it is the inevitable asocial status of the dwarf that drives him to his death. The image of the dwarf, perched on a factory chimney, attempting to “reach” the moon with a paper airplane or small ball, before plummeting to his death, is indeed a tragic one, but it is one arrived at by social mechanisms rather than as a result of any particular action of the dwarf.

Other works that might lend themselves to an “agency” reading include The Last of Hanako, by, Choe Yun, or I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Kim Young-ha. yet on close inspection both seem to fall away from agency, although I’ll have to think more carefully about Kim’s work. In any case, I would be interested in a reader pointing me to a Korean work of modern fiction that features a conventional, Aristotelian tragic hero, or evidence of radical agency. Until then, the following quote from “Asian Info” will give a hint as to where this blog will find the basis for Korea’s “anti-hero” literature:

Early Korean literature was heavily influenced by Shamanism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The early literature, which began as an oral tradition, depicted a love of nature and man and held that man was a part of nature. Good was rewarded and evil was punished and values like loyalty to the King, filial piety, respect for one’s elders, true friendship and chastity were emphasized.

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 14 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul

I read my first stories of Kim Yu-Jeong while concurrently reading the essay Extravagance and Authenticity by Kim Uchang. This proved an interesting set of readings as the essay and the stories focus on romantic love.

Kim Uchang’s essay follows the development of “free-love” as a new cultural artifact in Korea at the start of the 20th century. He is particularly interested (his modern politics, perhaps, showing) in demonstrating that this notion was external, initially quite artificial, and largely at the expense of women. Kim Uchang argues his points on the basis of the works of Yi Gwang-su, Kim Dong-in, Yeong Sang-seop (who wrote the critically noted and important “Three Generations”) and how they demonstrate the artificiality of the notion of romantic love Korea at the turn of the (previous) century.

This notion, of course, can be overplayed, since works as old as Yi-Saeng Peers Through the Wall clearly displayed a notion of romantic love untied from social status or the onus of social procedures. Yi-Saeng would have been written just about the time the crusades were going on just a bit to the west, so romantic love does have some pedigree in Korea dating back further than Kim Uchang discusses. And Kim Yu-jeong’s stories all seem to focus on a fairly pure ‘romantic’ love. I am too new at Korean fiction to assess if this is a function of how Kim Yu-jeong chose his subjects, or if Kim Uchang is over-simplifying. Updates, I suppose, to follow.

Read the full story

From Film Beats From the East, a review of My Right to Ravage Myself which is a translation of the Korean movie made from I Have the Right to Destroy Myself.

Below, is the trailer for the movie, some scenes of which suggest some changes have been made and that the movie might require concentration to follow.

I’ll have to see if I can find a subtitled copy…