Arriving at Hope via Empathy

Hope is a common word, but nothing can be harder to find in real life. Despair, yes. Despair exists, as proven by countless examples attesting to that state. A person in despair cannot move forward. They cannot be optimistic about tomorrow, nor imagine an end to their pain. Those suffering from despair share and describe these symptoms consistently; ergo, despair must exist as objective fact. Hope, however, is a different story. One has heard of hope, but it is hard to ascertain its existence. Hope does not appear, but is formed. Rather than a universal phenomenon, it is closer to personal fantasy. If despair is something we perceive, hope is something we believe in. How, then, can we describe hope? We might deduce hope’s characteristics from those of despair. Despair reaches its nadir with isolation. This includes not just isolation from other people, but also from one’s future. In that case, hope may be associated with escaping from isolation, that is, forming positive bonds with others and a stable connection with one’s future. How can we connect with others and with our futures?

       Sympathy and empathy are words that cannot be ignored when discussing hope as connection. While they might appear similar in that both describe understanding that is extended towards others, examining their etymology reveals that they are very different concepts. Sympathy is derived from the Greek sun (σύν, with) and pathos (πάθος, feeling). Taken together, sympathy means to feel and understand a person’s pain from outside that person. Empathy, on the other hand, comes from the Greek en (ἐν, in) and pathos. Empathy means to enter another person’s feelings and experience them from their point of view. To sympathize is to understand another person from the outside; to emphasize is to understand them from the inside. Sympathy is directed towards an Other, while empathy dissolves that boundary. Thus, while sympathy and empathy may appear to be similar in that both describe ways of understanding other people, they could not be more different according to the position in which that understanding occurs.

       The narrative of empathy has been used to great effect in depicting hope in Korean fiction. More often than not, a despairing protagonist is saved by an empathetic gesture of solidarity. There is no time or space in which we can deny the fact that pain is caused by other people, and that it is also other people that deliver us from pain. Few words, however, are as complex as solidarity. It means to come together, to stand shoulder to shoulder as one, to lend one’s strength to another; but there is no denying that “coming together as one” is but an illusion. People sharing a greater purpose might differ in their individual positions, and such differences often end up undermining or dismantling solidarity. If the notion of united solidarity is fantastical, however, is it possible for people to achieve solidarity in another way? Can people come together from their respective positions and reach empathy that way?

       Yun I-Hyeong’s Winding Bandages (Jakga Jeongsin, 2022) exemplifies the ways in which people can put their differences aside in a show of solidarity. With the relationship of central characters Jin-kyung and Se-yeon at its heart, the novel introduces supporting characters from various walks of life, differing in occupation, age, position, and circumstance. As each of their stories unfolds, the characters clash due to differences in background or opinion, but still attempt to reach an understanding and continue their relationship, revealing what solidarity truly means. When one empathizes with someone from within, rather than sympathizing with them from without, understanding is always possible. The novel shows that empathy can come not just from a position of similarity, but from a position of difference. That it is possible to express solidarity through consistent patience, like a bandage covering over a wound in continuous layers.

Listening and Empathizing Across Differences

The idea that solidarity is possible through empathy based on difference has gained traction in works discussing hope. Numerous authors are examining alternate ways of arriving at hope, attempting understanding from the inside, not the outside, while still maintaining a distance. Lim Solah’s short story “Caring for Fruit Flies”(Munhak Dongne, 2022) [winner of the 2022 Young Writer’s Award] is an eloquent example of the author’s preoccupation with empathy coming from a place of difference. At the Daesan Young Writer’s Forum held in June 2022, Lim spoke about the importance and possibility of finding empathy in difference rather than identification. According to Lim’s speech, there are three layers that must be broken through for the stories of the oppressed to be told. First, through the mouth of the speaker; second, through the ears of the listener; and third, through the times we live in. In other words, one must first break through one’s own inhibitions; and then the apprehension that whatever one says will be misconstrued by the listener; and finally, one must believe in the age that the speaker and listener are living in. All easier said than done, but there is no guarantee that even a story that has survived this rigorous processwill be received empathetically.

       “Caring for Fruit Flies” features a mother suffering from a mysterious illness and her daughter who believes that said illness was caused by a workplace hazard. The daughter in the story is a writer. As she sets out to turn her mother’s story into fiction, it is evident to the daughter that there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to attribute her mother’s symptoms to her workplace and to describe them that way. Her mother, however, remains unconvinced. Nor does she want her story to be written from her daughter’s point of view. The mother has her own point of view, which differs sharply from her daughter’s. Not willing to force her view upon her mother, the daughter is forced to examine her own attitude regarding other people’s lives, on how to look at someone else’s life and tell their story. She also wonders if it is possible for her to understand her mother, questioning the limits of empathy based on difference. Her view of her mother is different from the way her mother thinks of herself, but can she still understand her? In the end, the daughter sets aside her own narrative and bows to her mother’s wishes.

Choi Eunyoung, who depicted the various ways that women show solidarity to each other in Shoko’s Smile (Penguin Books, 2021) and Someone Who Cannot Hurt Me (Munhak Dongne, 2019), takes the potential of empathy based on difference further in her work. Her novel Bright Night (Munhak Dongne, 2021) tells the story of four generations of women, from great-grandmother to grandmother to mother to “I.” The story of the protagonist, told through her grandmother’s life, memories, and speech, shows how it is possible to bridge the differences of generations. What connects the protagonist to her grandmother, despite their completely different life experiences, is a shared history of pain. The novel takes a historical rather than contemporary approach to the pain inherent in a woman’s life, with the protagonist finding unexpected solace through the stories her grandmother tells of her forebearers’ pain. Listening to their stories, so different from her own experience, the protagonist feels her own wounds healing. Again, not because they share the same kind of pain, but because the act of speaking about and listening to pain is part of the healing process itself.

       The lives of the protagonist’s grandmothers have no place in history, erased under the mechanism that records the stories of winners, not losers. The fact that their untold stories are now reaching the protagonist after all these years proves that understanding and empathy transcend space and time. In the novel, erased history is revived in the telling from person to person. For a story to be handed down, however, both teller and listener need to be on the same page. In some ways, the listener’s role is even more important than that of the teller. Listening is possible only by putting one’s own thoughts aside. By putting aside one’s self, one creates room for love, replacing a history of pain with a history of love.

Kindly Observers

If the narrative of solidarity as represented in the works of Lim Solah and Choi Eunyoung utilizes distance to show that it is possible to empathize with others from a position of difference, Park Ji-young’s Lonely Death Workshop(Minumsa, 2022) reduces that distance itself to a formality, offering a completely different version of empathy. Lonely Death Workshop, in linked story form, shows us vignettes of characters who lead generally solitary lives that could be said to be closer to failure than success. The novel opens with the characters receiving a sudden invitation to attend a “lonely death workshop,” sent by someone with the username All Night Coin Laundry. At first glance, this appears to be random spam, but the recipients are actually carefully selected targets: those who believe they might die a lonely death one day but who must carry on with their lives in the meantime.

       The fear and anxiety that those invited to the lonely death workshop suffer in their daily lives are inevitable emotions for anyone living in modern society today. With one-person households accounting for an increasingly large proportion of all households in Korea, lonely deaths are no longer something confined to the local news; it is a reality that many of us face in the future. A lonely death is no longer an exceptionally unfortunate event, but a universal sort of despair shared by all of those living in today’s hyper-isolated world, where fear of dying alone is a completely rational concern. It is to these people that the organizers of the lonely death workshop reach out, inviting them to join in to prepare for their lonely deaths. Why not prepare for a rosier version of lonely death? they suggest.

       The workshop itself takes place online, on an application run by All Night Coin Laundry. The participants begin to upload moments from their lonely lives on the workshop page: writing down underlined passages from library books on Post-It notes, training every day to jump over increasingly longer chairs, making up a new joke for another person each day, petitioning Ben & Jerry’s to bring back their discontinued Turtle Soup flavor, writing daily obituaries . . . the workshop members follow each other’s uploads that show off their loneliness, but that is the extent of their participation. They do not get involved in the loneliness of others, nor do they look to others for their own relief. It would be difficult, however, to say that they are merely bystanders or witnesses to each another’s loneliness. A more accurate description would be that they are kind yet uninvolved observers. Bystanders have no objective, while witnesses are all about objectives. Bystanders go their way once their curiosity is satisfied, while witnesses concern themselves with an incident about which they can give a statement. An observer, however, is different. An observer focuses on the act of watching itself. They do not care whether an incident takes place or not, or about telling someone what they have seen. Their only concern is to actively observe their subject, without determining any purpose or objective.

       In the age of loneliness, hope is not the same as eradicating loneliness. It is to give one another enough space so that everyone can enjoy their own loneliness, while at the same time becoming each other’s observer so that nobody feels isolated. The distance the protagonists accord to one another in this novel might very well be the best attempt at hope that our society and literature is capable of imagining today. Many Korean works have used linked stories as a way of uncovering and highlighting the stories of ordinary people, not about heroic exploits but in the small ways they brighten our daily lives. The linked story form in Lonely Death Workshop, however, is used in a new way, linking lonely beings to one another while allowing each to retain their own solitude. This is the distance of hope, and the hope of distance.

Hoping and Welcoming

Hope is a common word, but nothing could be harder to find in real life. For hope is not something that occurs spontaneously, but a state that must be achieved through effort. There is nothing metaphorical about saying that we must become kindly observers in order to achieve that state. If we are to survive loneliness, we cannot leave others to suffer alone in pain. To relieve another person’s loneliness is to relieve our own. As individual as our existences may be, we must still live together. The more solitary our lives become, the more we must search for other ways to connect. If a lonely person is able to be in solitude without becoming isolated from society or from other people, that would be the most hopeful society imaginable at present.

       It is important to revisit what it means to be welcoming if we are to work toward this new age of hope. To welcome someone is to acknowledge that they exist. Acknowledging others means respecting their space, giving them their own space, and not expecting anything in return. Putting ourselves in the place of a kindly observer, for instance, is not something we do hoping to receive similar attention in exchange. Becoming each other’s observer means for us to stand back and look at the other person’s position, and how they are treated in society. Perhaps this kind of observation might be closer to sympathy than empathy. To become the observer of a life that would otherwise go completely unseen, however, is both the very least and the very most that we can do for the wellbeing of others and for ourselves. It is also the most immediate and realistic form of caring from a distance that we may practice in the lonely age of one-person households.

       For far too long, we have lived in the “me” era. Now we are dealing with the complications that era has left behind. For those already leading solitary lives, togetherness as understood in the past has become close to impossible. Many of us despair of the isolation brought on by the “me” age. If we are to beat this isolation, we must invent a new kind of togetherness that goes beyond the “we.” A good number of Korean authors are now addressing precisely this concern, searching for ways of being together that do not rely on “we” as a unit. If we were to attend a lonely death workshop, it is not in order to prepare for a happy, solitary death, but to learn how to live happily alone. And to live happily alone, we must ensure the happiness of others leading similar lives. This is the premise of hope in Korean fiction today.

Translated by Yoonna Cho

Korean Works Mentioned:

•   Winding Bandages (Jakga Jeongsin, 2022)
『붕대 감기』 (작가정신, 2022)

•   “Caring for Fruit Flies,” 2022 Young Writer’s Award Anthology (Munhak Dongne,2022)
「초파리 돌보기」, 『2022 제13회 젊은작가상 수상작품집』 (문학동네, 2022)

•   Bright Night (Munhak Dongne, 2021)
『밝은 밤』 (문학동네, 2021)

•   Lonely Death Workshop (Minumsa, 2022)
『고독사 워크숍』 (민음사, 2022)