There is, however, another way of understanding them. Giorgio Agamben suggests a different reading altogether: “This apparently ascetic thesis becomes intelligible only if we understand the meaning of this ‘not for us.’ It means not that happiness is reserved only for others (happiness is precisely for us), but that it awaits only at the point where it was not destined for us. That is: happiness can be ours only through magic.”—Profanations, trans. Jeff Fort (Zone Books, 2007)

       Clarifying the meaning and context of “magic” isn’t an easy task. But if we go with Kafka’s and Agamben’s ways of thinking and define magic as the act of calling everything in existence by its “original name” (arci-nome), we come to a better understanding, as ambiguous as it still is. The original name is the name by which a creature was called in the beginning, before the scattering of languages at the Tower of Babel. In other words, calling something by its original name—a secretive name—is a gesture of reverting a creature to a state of not being expressed. It is a severance from the languages of Babel. So magic is a gesture that signifies the severance from the expressions and languages of the world, encroached upon by ideologies. It is a fundamental new way of calling all things in existence. In both Kafka’s and Agamben’s contexts, hope and happiness must be invented anew, in an order entirely different from that of the existing world. Therein lies the true meaning of: “happiness [. . .] awaits only at the point where it was not destined for us. That is: happiness can be ours only through magic.”

       All this may sound abstract, far from the aim of this discourse: to find seeds of hope, or grounds of hope, that exist in Korean literature. But unless literary language and imagination reflect an acceptance and passive mirroring of reality, a discussion of hope must begin with an effort to restore the word “hope” to its original state. It probably wouldn’t be easy to find seeds of hope—stories and traces of hope—in today’s Korean literature, not within the boundaries of existing notions and discourses of hope prevalent in the world. Even aside from an oppressive and stifling reality, the word itself is so old and tainted that it is only used in the languages of politics and advertisement, and not very often at that. It’s been ages since the word “hope” has been spoken even in progressive discourses. Thriving today are languages of despair, darkness, and false visions, readily uttered by anyone and everyone, while no one takes notice of the used-up language of hope.

More than enough numbers and statistics of social phenomena attest that the lives of the people in Korea today—riddled with global problems such as neoliberalism, a new Cold War, the climate crisis, the pandemic, and aging—are characterized by darkness, despair, and abandoned dreams. Even when we focus on the peculiar driving forces of Korean society, as demonstrated through candlelight vigils, for instance, the prospect is much too fluid and dim, far from people’s actual experience. It has been stated time and time again that current Korean literature is devoid of narratives, imagination, and images pertaining to hope. But even when a work of literature depicts social conditions or customs, an effort is made to capture the atmosphere and aroma of an unseen world, and the story is told through the singularity of individual characters who are not reduced to a group or a structure that surrounds them. Historical and social landscapes do not unfold according to an existing plan, but either pervade each specific story or are slowly revealed through the story. A story about people as portrayed by literature begins at a point where it cannot be reduced to a sociological analysis, and ends outside of structures and systems. Above all, literature intrinsically seeks to deal with the uncertainty of a “permanent revolution” and discord with the times, which is why hope isn’t clearly captured and is often affirmed through paradox and irony in literature. In all eras and societies, hope in its full sense has always been insufficient or insubstantial.

       To see where hope resides in Korean literature, this essay looks at “Mijo’s Era” by Lee Seo Su (AXT, March/April 2021). The story is about a young woman named Mijo[1]who is struggling through a difficult period. Her life is besieged by typical but intense circumstances in Korean society in which a number of issues are intertwined: social polarization, structural poverty, unemployment and unstable employment, soaring housing prices and poor living environments, misogyny, exploitation of female labor, family dissolution, and unattainable future planning. The world surrounding Mijo is hopelessness itself without an exit. It is in this hopelessness, however, that the characters live and move and think, refusing to give, and the story subtly captures the faint possibilities created by the small movements in the characters’ inner worlds and in the relationships between the characters. When we come to the end of the story, we are seized by an odd conviction that these characters have—to our surprise—been moving gradually toward a certain dream, and will continue to move forward in the days to come. In addition, we sense the warmth that they share with one another without even realizing it, and the possibility of their solidarity. The dream, of course, isn’t yet marked on the world’s map, and the path thereto seems endlessly long.

“Mijo’s Era” is told through the voices of Mijo and of her mother, who is suffering from severe depression. Mijo’s father passed away seven years ago; Chungjo, Mijo’s older brother, has left home, supposedly to prepare for a civil service exam, but spends his days going from one part-time job to another. At the onset of the novel, Mijo goes to a job interview, arranged by an older girl named Suyeong. The interview, which is for an accounting position at a webtoon company in Guro Digital Complex, reveals that Mijo’s resumé is riddled with her resignations and job changes. (The fact that Mijo is a college graduate is mentioned in passing later; Suyeong seems to be a friend from college.) Mijo has always been the helpless employee who has had to comply when she is advised to resign on account of the company’s financial difficulties. Not only has she put herself out on the front lines of job hunting, she also has to find a new place to live with her mother with only fifty million won in hand for security deposit, as her neighborhood has been designated for redevelopment. The only place they can get in Seoul with that kind of money is a small semi-basement apartment. Suyeong, the only person Mijo can go to for advice and comfort, once dreamed of becoming a webtoon artist but she is now being mentally and physically bullied as she works as an assistant at a webtoon company, day after day drawing scenes for stories about male protagonists who indulge in perverted and sadistic sexual behavior. Suyeong suffers from partial hair loss as a result.

       The harsh and hopeless circumstances surrounding Mijo are to be distinctly experienced by the reader rather than socially reported, as the author entrusts Mijo, a first-person narrator, with increased authority over language. For instance, the uncommon expression “for a moment I lost the here and now,” which she uses to show how she feels during the interview, is something that has crossed over from the community to which she presently belongs along with terms such as eosi(assistant), K-jangnyeo (a Korean girl who is the oldest daughter in her family), and gongsisaeng(someone preparing for a civil servant exam). To be more precise, it is internet lingo used by the younger generation in Korea, which shows the delicate linguistic move made from the author-narrator’s position to the character’s inner self. Through such use of language, which technically corresponds to free indirect discourse, the author creates ironic gaps in the narration of Mijo, a first-person narrator.

       “Mijo’s Era” is a story about Suyeong, Chungjo, and Mijo’s mother, as much as it is a story about Mijo, so much so that any one of them could easily take Mijo’s place. Which means that the story, even with four main characters, successfully maintains the tension and balance in the narrative; this is possible because a subtle rift is constantly created as Mijo, the narrator, makes ironic comments about the other three characters while thinking of them. Mijo has a hard time understanding Suyeong, who resigns herself to her situation, fatalistically saying, “It’s all the same no matter where you go” as her dream of becoming a webtoon artist is trampled under the weight of ugly male fantasies. Sometimes Mijo expresses her anger toward Suyeong. Then there’s Mijo’s mother, who has health issues and relies almost completely on her daughter. Mijo loves her mother, but there comes a point when her love for her mother isn’t enough for her to bear the burden alone. And what is there to say about Chungjo, the oldest son of the family, who goes around the country trying out famous restaurants, leaving his mother solely in the care of his younger sister? There’s a part of Mijo that remains hidden when she thinks about her family. When she—unwittingly—suppresses that part of herself, the suppression becomes something that belongs to the era as well as to herself as an individual.

       “Mijo’s Era,” however, is a story that knows that even when the structure of oppression weighs on and changes a person’s spirit, there is a space in the heart that allows the person to free herself from the structure. If we could say that this space is the gap between true reality and superficial reality, it is here, perhaps, that “Mijo’s Era” succeeds in capturing reality as it is. The unique reality in in this story results not only from the realism and the typicalness of the times shown through things like the oppressive interview inflicted upon Mijo; the abhorrent “artistic labor” performed by Suyeong; Mijo and her mother’s move to as emi-basement room; and the senseless behavior of Chungjo, but it also arises from the space in the hearts of the characters who have turned strangely aside from unalterable reality. This is different from common rationalization; it isa resistance, a labor of the heart, through which they find a crack in the immutable reality. This seems to be the source of the curious optimism and spirit of positivity that envelops the characters, despite the bleakness of their situation: to return to the theme of this discourse, the place where “seeds of hope” lie, “where hope resides.”

       And this crack—this space in the heart—is not open just to Mijo, the narrator. Is Suyeong, who helplessly says, “It’s all the same,” truly accepting of the exploitation of her spirit and body, and the eventual discarding of her labor and youth? A careful look at Suyeong shows that she is not completely numb in her thoughts and behavior, nor is she completely helpless. The words “It’s all the same no matter where you go” are an expression of self-deprecation and resignation, but they could also be the most accurate diagnosis of a reality that is difficult to accept. Above all, we must focus on Suyeong’s bored and careless way of speaking. When Mijo is shocked by the flyers exclaiming Sex Dolls for 20,000 won! scattered on the streets of the complex at night, Suyeong says, “Don’t take them so seriously. They don’t bother me at all anymore. You’d pass out if you knew what I spend all day drawing.” When she casually uses worn-out clichés like “pass out” as a form of self-defense so as not to take something too seriously, Suyeong has side stepped her reality, and has perhaps even broken free of it. This casual distancing includes Suyeong’s self-objectification. She sees her own life as part of the history of women workers who have labored in the complex throughout the years, displayed on the tile wall of the complex. Suyeong’s labor stands over the history of labor by women of the Guro Complex who worked in wig factories in the ’60s, the industrial complex in the ’70s, the Korean export industry complex in the ’80s,and the “G Valley” in the 2000s. Looking at the pictures of these women on the wall—probably of her mother’s generation—Suyeong says, “I stopped blaming myself, Mijo, after I saw those pictures.”

Just like the two text messages Suyeong sends Mijo while on a walk by the banks of the Dorimcheon, Suyeong’s awakening is expressed with irony: “Mijo, I thought I’d become somebody since I’m so good at writing and drawing, but look, I’ve been tossed aside in Dorimcheon along with stubs of Raison cigarettes.” The language is unfamiliar and disconcerting to Mijo.

     You know, Mijo, it’s time that kills people physically, but it’s the era that kills us mentally, Suyeong said.

     What? I asked, not sure if I understood.

     It’s this era, this era that’s killing my mind, Suyeong said.

       As the narrator of the story, Mijo quietly listens to Suyeong and writes down what she says, wondering how she should live and pass through “this era” with her.

       Mijo’s mother, who suffers from depression, writes down the things she sees and feels every day in disorderly language; the words contain the truth unreachable by the standardized language of the world, such as: “A day like leftover rice cake dumped out by the shop,” and “Two of the four discarded wardrobes are facing the other way.” And there, Mijo sees something poetic. This is partly because the lives and reality of the mother and the daughter are connected together from the deepest depths; because Mijo’s mother is unaware of the linguistic rules and order of the world, her language is open, slightly askance, toward the original names of all things inexistence. The context in which a wanted ad—Looking for men to work on a hog farm. Monthly salary: 1.8–2 million won, no visa required, illegal labor accepted—that Mijo comes across while walking in the complex is seen as “something poetic.” The same goes for Suyeong’s text message, Mijo, I’ve never been worried about myself not being pretty or thin, but I’m so worried about my talent in drawing, which brings poetic resonance to Mijo’s life, beyond the prosaic threshold of a life without any exit. In this way, the language of the narrator, Mijo, overlaps with Suyeong’s language as well as her mother’s.

       The sweet potato vines that Mijo’s mother grows in water has become cumbersome as Mijo and her mother prepare to move into as mall semi-basement apartment. Mijo is shocked by her own “hatred of a quiet plant, which [she] didn’t even know existed.” But in the end, the harmless plant gives rise to a beautiful flight of fancy that connects her mother to Suyeong and binds them together. Looking at the sweet potato vines that her mother has cut off, Mijo thinks, “I wish I could transplant that onto the top of Suyeong’s head,” thinking of her friend’s partial hair loss. In that moment, the severed vines of a dream are transplanted, moving to a possibility of a new genesis, to a place of dreams.

       Mijo doesn’t text Suyeong back. Instead, she opens her diary. As she does, she hears the sound of fingers tapping on a keyboard on the other side of the wall. Her mother is writing in her journal, a poem. Thus the story comes to an end. We’re writing sentences together at the same time. Suyeong is probably out walking. This is a night when tomorrow seems far away, and our house even farther away, and a dream of dandelion seeds flying our way, landing on our heads, seems near.

       At the end of the story, we learn that what we have read thus far is Mijo’s diary. Suyeong’s text message, the diary-poem of Mijo’s mother, and Chungjo’s running away were all being written down in the diary, contributing to it in their own ways. Couldn’t we call this a solidarity of different voices? Couldn’t we call this a place of dreams, written down together? The power of literature lies not in creating dreams but in finding a place for the ignition, imagination, and writing down of dreams. Where words spoken by different voices overlap and move forward together; where severed dreams can become whole again. If that is where hope resides, Lee Seo Su’s “Mijo’s Era” seems to point, faithfully and delicately, to a place where the dreams of lost Mijos can begin again and continue.

Translated by Yewon Jung