Korean Literature Now - KLN Strings > Themes in Korean Lit > The Artistry of Literary Translation and the Advent of AI

The Artistry of Literary Translation and the Advent of AI

by Korean Literature Now September 7, 2023

[Cover Feature] Let the Snake Wait Under His Weed:

The (In)Decision of the Poetry Translator

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[Cover Feature] Disintegration of Language:

A Translator’s Self-defense in the Era of AI

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[Cover Feature] 212 Versions of the Same Story:

Publishing Korean Literature in Japan

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Daydreams of a River The new workshop at the factory was built on what was once the paddock at the old ranch. At the end of the paddock, two animal sheds stood in a boomerang shape. Instead of being torn down, these plastered, concrete structures were now used to store saw blades, oil drums for machinery, and stacks of imported wood. One could easily guess the number of blocks that went into each shed. Some rattled loose, as if they hadn’t been laid cleanly. The ventilation windows near the roof were exactly the size of those blocks. Throughout the village were these types of bare-bones sheds, assembled like LEGO houses. A tour bus and several cars with Seoul license plates traveled along the unpaved road to the factory. Red dust, as if bricks had been ground to powder, wafted up from the lane. Rolling hills spread beyond the pasture. Here and there, short trees grew sparsely. Someone sitting at the front of the bus boasted it was an ideal location for a ranch, adding that if a cow happened to escape, you’d be able to find it easily enough. The red dust clung to the black dress shoes of the Seoul staff, even to the bottom of their carefully pressed trousers. The director and factory manager stood side by side at the factory entrance to hang up the sign. Since the young CEO from the main office was on an overseas business trip, he couldn’t attend the sign hanging ceremony. The wooden placard on which the factory name was inscribed in large cursive letters still reeked of varnish. The main office and factory staff stood in a circle and clapped. The director was so short his head barely came up to the shoulders of the tall, skinny factory manager. The difference in the length of their arms was the problem. It wasn’t easy to put the two men at both ends of the sign in one camera frame. If the focus was on the director, everything above the factory manager’s forehead was cut off, as well as the first letter of the sign. But if the focus was on the manager, the director’s stomach would be cut off. In the end, symmetry was barely achieved with the director holding the bottom of the sign and the factory manager holding the top. The manager didn’t shake hands with the people from the main office, though he was meeting them for the first time. He walked hurriedly, hands jammed inside his pants pockets and his torso leading the way before his feet. His unusual gait made him stick out from the rest of the people. A saw blade had taken off two segments of his left middle finger, as well as his right ring finger and pinky, when he’d learned his trade at the sawmill. The director was a vigorous man in his early forties. He always had a hard-sided leather briefcase in his hand. The weight of it was something. Several employees complained of having had their knees or thighs stabbed by a corner of his briefcase while passing him in the hallway. All year round, he carried his suit jacket squeezed under his armpit. He gave off the tired air of a traveler who had just stepped off a plane. Even when going between the CEO’s office and his own, or coming back from the bathroom, he took short, hurried strides, as if late for a meeting. There were too many people at the ceremony to fit all of them in one picture. About a third of the seventy or so staff ended up with the backs of their heads taken, and out of those whose faces were captured, five or six had their eyes closed. A few had taken their sweet time, not realizing the ceremony was beginning, and were caught running belatedly toward the entrance. The hands of those applauding enthusiastically were blurred, as if they’d been rubbed out with an eraser, or were clasped together, as if in prayer. Caught also on the bottom right corner of the photo was a dark smudge. A black dog had come out of nowhere. There were many stray dogs in that area. But it was the woman and not so much the dog that ruined the photo. The woman stood three people over from the director, alongside the other female staff from the main office. As though conscious of the camera, her gaze wasn’t directed at the director or factory manager hanging up the sign, but at some point beyond the frame of the picture. And those eyes glowed red. Much later, in a book titled The Basics of Photography, she learned what causes the red-eye effect. In short, her eyes had been looking directly at the camera when the flash went off. And while she’d been gazing at Y, Y had been gazing back at her through the viewfinder. Y wasn’t in the picture. He’d been holding the camera, pressing the shutter button some five meters away. It had been Hanil Trading’s most prosperous year. Every six months, the company posted a recruitment advertisement in a trade newsletter. On the day of the sign hanging ceremony, all the employees from both the main office and the factory had attended, except for the CEO who was away on a business trip. During this period, Hanil Trading had the most employees in its history since its founding. Among the staff lined up on the factory manager’s side stood a man with a white Yankees cap set crookedly on his head, his long legs spread like the pegs of a clothespin. A was a year younger than the woman. He didn’t look at all interested in the ceremony. Not only was his face hidden in the shadow of his cap brim, but the camera had captured only one side of his face. He was the last young man left in that village. Everyone who worked at the factory was from there, except the manager. There were two middle-aged women responsible for making lunch for all the factory workers, cleaning the factory, and other odd jobs, four men with Class 1 commercial driver’s licenses, and nine men who operated the machinery at the workshop. Over fifty workers from the main office trailed the factory manager like a herd of cows, ambling around the two sheds, workshop, and office. At sunset, the rancher would have opened the paddock gate and led the cows scattered around the ranch back to the sheds. The sheds had probably been arranged in a boomerang shape to prevent the cows from going astray. The workshop was as spacious as a hangar. To allow large trucks to come inside, a wide opening was created in one wall and double doors installed. The director and a few female staff members cheered in front of oversized machines equipped with circular saws about a meter in diameter. A plank of wood was placed on a machine workbench for a demonstration. Judging from the deep reddish brown of the heartwood, it looked like a type of cherry wood. When the manager switched on the machine, the conveyor belt started moving and the stainless-steel saw began to rotate. They had to shout above the noise. The wood moved closer to the blade. The noise grew louder. The cherry wood slipped back a little, resisting the saw, but the spinning blade only whirled faster, its edge drawing dozens of circles in a blur. The woman felt dizzy. “Cherry wood is a dense hardwood, so it isn’t easy to cut. And this is a cross grain piece, which makes it hard to plane. Even veterans get nervous handling this.” The manager barked in a near shout, as if angry. “But there’s no better wood than this!” The blade dug into the wood. Dark sawdust flew out from both sides of the blade. Her nostrils tingled. But the director was more interested in business than in the type of wood or its characteristics. “I hope you’re not planning to throw all this sawdust out. You can still use it, can’t you? Maybe mix it with a kind of glue and make things like particle boards?” The manager laughed silently, showing his yellow teeth. “Sure, it’s got lots of uses. But I don’t recommend making particle boards out of it since the boards are flimsy and bend too easily. Pretty low quality, I have to say. But in the winter, burning sawdust for heating is the best.” Meanwhile, the wood was cut in two and came to a stop at the end of the workbench. However, her ears continued to ring, even after the machine stopped and the workshop grew quiet. The two concrete columns seemed to have been hastily erected to meet the date of the ceremony, for there wasn’t even a gate, let alone a chain link fence. Elderly folk from the village, as well as the stray dogs, flocked into the yard. Most of the old people were related to the factory workers. Straw mats were laid down between the sheds and workshop, and tables of all shapes and sizes were set up. The middle-aged local women who’d been mobilized for the ceremony rushed about, carrying foil-lined plates of boiled pork slices and layered rice cakes with red beans, the slapping of their plastic sandals especially loud. The elderly folks became tipsy off just a few shots of liquor. A few rose to their feet and started swaying back and forth, though there was no music. Whenever they lifted their legs, their white socks flashed, stained with reddish dirt. The faces of the elderly who were seated were also ruddy with drink. An old man poured liquor for another old man, who was actually his nephew, and this nephew, observing all formalities, politely received the drink with two hands and then turned away to swallow it. Dogs circled the tables, eyeing the people. The elderly showed their few remaining yellow teeth or danced with their eyes closed, as if listening to distant strains of music, occasionally flying into a rage at the dogs who tried to sneak some food. They’d stamp their feet or hurl a rubber shoe at them. The dogs arched their backs like bows, their tails raised and rigid like poker sticks. If a woman serving food tossed them a slice of pork, they’d all rush to pounce at the dirt-covered scrap of meat. They shoved their snouts into the dirt, planting their paws into the ground so that they wouldn’t get pushed back. A cloud of red dust rose. But it was the black dog who managed to get the scrap of meat each time. It had long legs and a pointy snout. An old man pointed at the black dog. “Now that’s a clever dog. He came from our dog and that one over there.” The old man next to him tossed back his shot and shook his head. “How can your dog be the daddy? Your dog isn’t even the right breed.” “Look at those eyes,” the first man said, not wanting to lose. “They’re definitely from our dog. I saw it with my own eyes, saw your dog jump over my fence to get to my dog.” “You can’t even tell the difference between a piss pot and somebody’s head without your glasses.” “Who cares who the daddy is?” a third man said, interrupting. “They’re just dogs for crying out loud. You just worry about yourselves.” An old man slapped his knee. A man seated near him stuck his foot out and poked him in the side. Then another old man sitting amongst them raised his cloudy eyes and glanced about, and began to snicker. Low laughter escaped from between his crooked teeth. The boiled pork smelled bad. Men who could stomach it topped it with garlic, wrapped the whole thing in lettuce, and then crammed it into their mouths. Even before they swallowed, they opened their mouths that were still full of food and knocked back some soju. With a low Formica table between them, the people from the main office and the factory workers were standoffish with one another, like groups holding a labor-management negotiation. Assistant manager Lee from the main office got to his feet, rattling an empty soju bottle into which he’d stuck the end of a metal spoon. He stabbed the end of his necktie into his shirt front pocket. A flush had spread down to his neck from the drinks the factory workers had poured him. A factory worker who’d exchanged a few words with him shouted, “Hey there, looking sharp!” Laughter burst from the people sitting down. Caught off guard by the sudden noise, a dingy dog that had been lingering by the tables started barking at no one in particular. Of the seventy plus people in the group photo, Mr. Lee, the assistant manager, stood out. He wore a navy-blue double-breasted suit, with gray pinstripes and gold buttons embossed with an anchor. If he had a pipe in his mouth, he would have looked like a sailor. Comments about Mr. Lee’s suit erupted all over the yard. Someone gave a long whistle. He waited for the laughter to subside and then rattled the soju bottle again. The factory manager and director had been whispering with each other for some time, their heads close together. Urged by Mr. Lee, Miss Kim from the trade department stood up. She was nicknamed Kitty because of her big eyes and unusually small mouth. “Sing! Sing!” the men hollered, loosened by drink. Flushing a deep red, Miss Kim introduced herself briefly and sat down. The men cheered. She kept tasting dirt in her food. A yellow dog was watching her, crouched down on the ground across from her. The dog had baggy skin, as if she’d recently given birth to a litter, and the corners of her eyes were crusted with sleep. The woman tossed her a piece of meat, but the black dog appeared out of nowhere and intercepted it. Instead of lunging for the food, Goldie cowered and shrank back. Her ten sagging teats swung in different directions and came to a stop. Holding out another piece of meat, she called Goldie over, but only after quite some time did she come, swinging her teats. Instead of snatching up the food right away, she licked the woman’s hand for a long time before she took it. Her teeth seemed weak, too. Bits of meat fell out from between her teeth. When she finished, Goldie went and sat behind a young man, her teats swinging from side to side. He was wearing a Yankees cap pulled low over his face, drinking quietly. It was A. Several older men sitting across the table from him scolded A for not removing his cap before his elders. A woman who’d been bringing over some meat and soju glanced at the men. “Everyone’s got their reasons, all right?” One of the men glared at her with bloodshot eyes. Since A’s expression was hidden by his hat, she couldn’t see his reaction. The water tap was behind the sheds. Goldie followed the woman, her flesh swinging. As she moved forward, the baggy flesh on both sides struck each other, causing ripples to break out on her skin. She looked uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a coat several sizes too big for her. If the woman were to pull down a zipper somewhere on that hide, a small puppy just might spring out. It seemed the tap was supplying water to the sheds. A long rubber hose, filled with sand, was connected to the tap. Inside the hose was a tiny maple leaf. She twisted open the tap and waited at the end of the hose for the water to come out. The water was so cold her hands went nearly numb. Piles of junk lay behind the sheds. Bricks and Styrofoam pieces mixed with silt. There were also pots, rubber tubs, and a deflated child inner tube. She turned around, but Goldie was gone. She clicked her tongue, but she didn’t appear. It was dark inside the shed, even in the middle of the day. A pile of North American walnut logs was stacked on one side. When they first started at the company the previous year, Y and the woman had spent all winter at the Incheon Port. Forklifts roamed constantly between the huge containers. It was so cold that her skin bloomed red under her pants. Lumber arrived from North America once a week. Logs as long as twenty meters and as wide as an entire arm span were heaped like a mountain on the loading dock. From the top of the logs, she could see the Incheon pier. Ships carrying containers were anchored. The pier was chaotic with constantly moving cranes, trailers, and longshoremen. She and Y’s job was to check the number and type of logs against what was written in the invoice. Y hopped from log to log. The woman followed. For a moment, when her body was airborne, the pier seemed to loom closer. The soles of her shoes wore down quickly. That winter, she went through three pairs of shoes. Though she wore gloves and boots, her hands went numb and she couldn’t feel her feet either. If she couldn’t bear the cold any longer during log inspection, they’d leave the docks. Instead of walking all the way to the overpass to get to the food stall across the street, they’d jaywalk. Y held her hand. His hand was lukewarm. When she drank a hot cup of oden soup, her skin began to itch as it thawed. She wanted to see Y from that time, but Y wasn’t in any of the pictures. The shed smelled of animal excrement and tree sap. Under the dark ceiling, sockets without lightbulbs dangled from cords both long and short. You could see the village across the street through the brick-sized ventilation windows. When night fell, the cows locked up inside the sheds would have watched the blinking lights of passing cars through the windows. There were many animal sheds at the base of the mountains. She could easily tell they were no longer in use. A tongue licked the back of her hand. It was Goldie. Further inside the shed on the pile of walnut logs sat A. How long had he been inside? He was smoking. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I wasn’t following you. You see those old farts out there? I can’t even have a smoke around them. They’d all get up in my face if I did.” He flicked the cigarette butt from between his fingers. Drawing an arc in the air, it flew out the window. “There was an outbreak here. White spots showed up on the cows’ brains, like the holes of a sponge. All the dairy cows died. We dug pits to bury them and used excavators to transport the bodies. For two weeks, the excavators went around here. The spots where they’re buried are spongy. We filled the pits and tamped the dirt down, but as the cows rot, the pits keep sinking.” A got up from the logs. He was much taller than she’d thought. Goldie went to him, her flesh swinging. A heaved a deep sigh. She caught a whiff of liquor on his breath. “I’ll be on a boat by next February. A tuna reefer. Once you set out to sea, it might be two years before you come ashore.” He walked toward the shed entrance with Goldie. Before he stepped out, he turned and looked at the woman. He heaved another sigh, as though drunk. And then without any explanation, he said he was the type to see a thing through if he put his mind to it. The elderly men caused a commotion trying to find their shoes. There were over twenty pairs of white rubber shoes in the yard, turned over and lying askew. Even when the men flopped down on their behinds, drunk, they snickered like children frolicking in the water. Since every one of them was dressed in a white hanbok, it was difficult to tell them apart. They looked different, and then all at once like the same person. “Aigo, Father!” Daughters-in-law, who were elderly themselves, came running, wiping their wet hands on their baggy trousers. Red dust rose from where they’d dragged their sandals. The factory manager accepted every drink that his staff poured him. Drunk, he kept urging more liquor on the director who sat across from him. Liquor sloshed out from the shot glass he held with his four fingers. The finger that had its tip severed was blunt, with new skin having grown on top of it. The director stubbornly turned down every drink. He blamed it on the meeting he had to attend the next day. Though he hadn’t had a single drink, he looked tired, as though he’d just gotten off a long-haul flight. A fine layer of reddish dust covered his hair that was slicked back with pomade. Every time, the manager slurred, “Ah jeez, not even a single drink?” The director’s car was the first to leave the factory. Those returning to Seoul by bus scrambled to the entrance where the tour bus was parked. The yard offered a clear view of the people climbing aboard. Drunk men staggered to the side of the road and urinated for a long time. Their suit trousers were wrinkled and the shirt collars grubby. Darkness was moving in from the direction of the bus. The stray dogs from the village roamed the yard and thrust their noses into the ground, sniffing for meat. The rest of the city people split off into different cars. The woman and Y were supposed to catch a ride with Mr. Lee, the assistant manager, but Y was still snapping photos of the factory. Loosened up with drink, the factory manager had taken his hands out of his pockets and now went so far as to wave at the camera. In less than a year, he would lose two more fingers out of the remaining four on his left hand. The circular saw was cutting through cherry wood when it hit grain running in a different direction and jerked up. In the blink of an eye, two of his fingers flew off, spraying like sawdust. The accident threw the main office into chaos. As soon as he heard about the accident, the CEO called the factory manager, a man twenty years his senior, a “fucking idiot.” He then made countless calls to check if the manager had broken any laws by neglecting to use a safety device. He also asked Mr. Lee to secretly investigate whether he’d been drinking on the job. The woman called out to Y, who was taking his time. As she was getting in Mr. Lee’s car, she looked toward the sheds and workshop, but A was nowhere in sight. The village women were clearing away the mats from one side of the yard. The stray dogs swarmed toward morsels of food that had dropped on the ground. The factory workers stationed on one side of the yard would probably keep drinking well into the night. The tall young man in the Yankees cap wasn’t by the entrance either. The bus pulled farther away from the factory. The woman continued to scan the surrounding area for A, like a farmer looking for a cow that had escaped from his paddock. Wondering if he was hiding, she scrutinized the trees and then laughed at herself. Being so tall, A wouldn’t be able to hide behind such small trees. She’d wanted to wish him good luck at sea. She’d even clicked her tongue for Goldie, but there was no sign of the dog either. It quickly grew dark. Animal sheds flickered in the darkness. There wasn’t a single streetlight along the road. They had to go slowly, since the headlights lit only a short distance ahead. Mr. Lee kept sticking out his tongue to lick his dry lips, as if he were thirsty. The road had many sharp curves, and Mr. Lee hit the brakes at every bend. Y seemed tired. Sitting in the backseat, he slept with his head bowed. Though they were unable to catch up to the tour bus that had left much earlier, they should have been able to see at least the lights of the other cars. At first, they thought nothing of it, assuming they couldn’t see the cars ahead because of the bends in the road. But after driving for twenty minutes, they realized they must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. The road was completely empty. They were the only ones on the road. It was pitch black everywhere, with no houses in sight. They had no choice but to keep going until they came to a sign. Mr. Lee started driving a little faster. Just as they were going around a bend, a white object darted out from the opposite side of the road. Mr. Lee slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. The object hit the bumper and flew into the dark rush field. The car stopped after it had hurtled forward for another five meters. Mr. Lee peered at the road behind them through his rearview mirror. He could hardly see anything in the glow of the taillight. Y, awakened by the impact, glanced about with puffy eyes. Mr. Lee made a face. “Shit.” He rolled down his window and spat outside. He left the engine running and climbed out of the car. Through the rearview mirror, she saw him move farther away from the car. He was soon swallowed up by darkness. Y said it was most likely nothing and yawned. “Probably a badger or a squirrel.” She’d caught only a flash, but it had seemed much bigger than that. The object in the headlights had been white. About ten minutes later, Mr. Lee came back to the car. Instead of getting in the driver’s seat again, he stood beside the car and smoked. When he climbed inside, he reeked of liquor and cigarettes. “It was a dog,” he said. The village had an unusual number of stray dogs, but the woman’s gut feeling was that it hadn’t been a dog. Back at the factory, the elderly people had been wearing white. They flashed across her mind, and then vanished. Mr. Lee scrubbed his face with both hands. “No, actually, it’s too dark to see anything.” The bottom of the hill about three meters below was as black as a well. It was impossible to search every spot with a flashlight. “Mr. Lee, are you sure it went in that direction?” Y called out from the dark. “I don’t think it was over there.” The dark was disorienting. They couldn’t tell where they’d hit the object. After crashing into the bumper, it had hurtled off the road. It wouldn’t be easy to find where it had landed. Mr. Lee raised the flashlight above his head and raked the light over the field. The light punched holes in the darkness that was like a vast carpet. Dense clumps of rush grass. Dry bushes. Animal sheds no longer in use. The flashlight moved over the field again. Right then in the light, the woman saw the grass shake. “Over there! It’s alive!” She started moving before she finished speaking. The slope wasn’t steep, but the soil was so dry she slipped and tumbled down. “Don’t move the light!” she shouted without looking back. “Yes, there! Keep shining it there!” Because it was the dry season, the rushes were dry. They wrapped around her legs. She heard Y come up behind her. The ground was firm underfoot, but it would give way suddenly into spongy spots. She recalled what A had said. That there were many holes throughout the village where the dead cows had been buried. As the bodies decomposed, the holes that had been covered with dirt turned soft. Maybe it had been a joke to scare a city girl. She walked toward the spot the flashlight revealed, a flattened area. The broken rushes shook. It was a dog. Thinking it was Goldie, she brought her face close, but it wasn’t her. It was panting. The tongue that lolled out of its open mouth looked unnaturally long. “So it actually was a dog?” Y said, catching his breath. He then yelled in Mr. Lee’s direction. “It was a dog! A dog!” It was still warm. When she touched it, its breathing grew quieter. She buried her fingers in its ruff and stroked its fur. It must have been hit in the stomach. Every time her hand went near the stomach, the dog silently bared its teeth. The rushes were sticky. She felt something mushy next to her. The entrails that had spilled from its stomach were splayed on the trampled rush. “Let’s go.” Y said, turning around. That second, the dog’s eyes that had rolled back into its head flashed toward Y. The dog shot up and clamped down on the woman’s wrist with every last bit of strength. Its fangs pierced the woman’s flesh. Her arm turned numb. When she raised her arm, the dog’s head came up as well. Her arm felt so heavy she felt as if it were going to snap off. Once the dog had latched onto her wrist, it refused to let go. She saw its eyes then. Rolled back to show mostly whites, its eyes were welled up with tears. Its saliva seeped into her veins. She remembered those eyes about ten years later, when she herself bit down on someone’s arm. The man clobbered her repeatedly in the face with her purse. The buckle on the purse whacked her in the eye. She tried to get a good look at his face, but she couldn’t, because one of her eyes had swollen shut. Even as she was dragged along the side street, she bit down harder and refused to let go. The dog’s fangs seemed to have pierced through her muscle to the bone. She couldn’t help thinking that if she continued to stay this way, her hand may have to be amputated. The factory manager’s blunt fingers crossed her mind. She shook her arm frantically, but the fangs sank deeper into her flesh. Y, who had been on his way back, heard her scream and came running. Though it was dark, she saw Y leap through the rushes. The dog’s saliva seeped into her bloodstream, and she had the thought that she’d perhaps become half dog. Like a dog, she stared into the darkness. It seemed she could hear, even see, the rustling of a small insect inside the rushes. Y kicked the dog. Her arm was also kicked in the process. The dog would not unlatch from her. Y felt around the rushes. There was a large rock inside his hand. The woman was dragged deeper into the side street by a man whose face she couldn’t see. She lost a heel along the way. Her socks ripped and her skin scraped along the cracked sidewalk and started to bleed. The narrow street that led to her house was always deserted. Even though low-rises with basements lined the street and every detached home was filled with people, she was always the only one in the street. The security light had gone out a long time ago, but no one had replaced the bulb. When she’d sensed someone behind her, it was already too late. The man had been hiding behind the stairs of a low-rise and had come up silently behind her. A strong hand clamped over her nose and mouth. His other hand grabbed at her purse that was slung over her shoulder. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to twist away, but his hand only tightened over her nose and mouth. His palm reeked and was damp with sweat. She had no choice but to bite his hand so that she could breathe. Ahh! He clutched his hand and jumped back. Right then, she could have fled in the opposite direction. But she dashed toward him and bit his arm. Her teeth didn’t sink easily into his muscular arm. She bit down with all her strength. Her teeth pierced his flesh. His muscles seemed to be crumbling between her teeth. He jumped up and down in pain. His blood flowed between her teeth and down her throat. It tasted fishy. The man bashed her face with her purse. The buckle on the purse hit her in the eye. Still she didn’t let go of his arm. His fist pummeled her face. Her nose collapsed and something hot gushed down her face. The crunch of several top teeth breaking off reverberated in her head. Strangely enough, she remembered the eyes of the dog that had bitten her wrist and would not let go. She felt no pain. He dragged her along the street while smashing her head against the stone wall of a low-rise. Once, twice, everything turned white. She wanted to open her mouth, but she couldn’t. She believed her dog nature had finally shown itself for the first time. “Once a dog bites, it rarely lets go,” said H, whom she had run into ten years later. He rolled up his pant leg. She saw the pink keloid scar that was shinier than the rest of his skin. It was a dog bite wound. The man whose face she hadn’t been able to see threw the woman down at the end of the street and hurled the purse at her face. “You fucking bitch!” As if still angry, he stomped on her stomach and thighs with his boots. He then spat on her. H scratched at the keloid scar. “If I got this hurt, can you imagine what happened to the dog?” “Why didn’t you just let him take your purse?” Everyone who came to the hospital said the same thing. They shook their heads, as they gazed down at the woman lying in bed with a mashed eye, fractured nose, three broken teeth, and bruises all over her body. Some asked if there had been valuables in her purse. However, she’d had only a single ten-thousand-won bill inside her purse that day. No one could understand. Each time a visitor offered a comment, her mother, who had been caring for her, added, “Stupid, stupid girl,” and let out a big sigh. The woman looked down at her feet which were sticking out from under the sheet. Her skinned heels were oozing blood and a toenail had fallen off. Y frowned as soon as he came to the hospital. Y was wearing snug leather pants that looked uncomfortable and boots that came up to right below his knees. He glanced at her face a few times and sat on the end of her bed. “You look like a different person.” She gave him a small smile. “Don’t worry. The swelling and bruising will go away. The doctor straightened my nose and as for my broken teeth, I can get implants.” “See?” Y said, slowly shaking his head from side to side. “You still don’t understand.” Until then, the woman had no idea that Y had joined a motorcycle club. She came home a day earlier than her discharge date. That night, Y didn’t come home. Y, who returned late the next morning, didn’t wash up or eat, and went straight to bed. As though he had roamed about all night, she smelled on him the winter wind she’d smelled at the Incheon Port. “You’ve changed too much. You’re not the same shy girl who couldn’t even look at a boy.” Her bruises disappeared and she got dental implants, but Y’s complaints continued. When she asked him why he was always out, he said it was because he was bored. Soon, Y no longer came home in the morning. The office of High Speed, the motorcycle club, was located at an auto body shop right outside Seoul. A sign that said, “We remove dents!” stood in front of the shop, the ground stained with grease and motor oil. The garage owner was around Y’s age. He said that in the daytime he restored vehicles that had been in collisions with the help of his two employees and then on holidays or late at night, he took out his motorcycle. Y wasn’t there. Even the club members couldn’t get a hold of him. Once members were notified of the date, time, and place by email, those who were able to make it gathered and rode their motorcycles together. The owner added that they liked to go on the newly built road in front of Munhak Stadium these days. In one corner of the body shop was a bulletin board for High Speed members. “I need to talk to you, so please come home.” She put up her note where it would be most noticeable. Y didn’t come home. The woman’s uterus, which had been as small as an apple, became the size of a melon. Blue veins spiderwebbed over her breasts. When she rose to her feet or sat down, her groin strained. As he was doing the ultrasound exam, the obstetrician let slip, “What a handsome fella!” It was a boy. The baby inside her belly grew hair, as well as fingernails and toenails. They said that around this time, fingerprints formed on the fingers. As soon as a stethoscope was placed on her belly, a fetal heartbeat echoed in the examination room. The body shop owner recognized her. He said he’d seen Y once on the new road near the airport about two weeks before. On the bulletin board was a message from Y. “Please let me go. Stop hanging onto me for Christ’s sake. I’m so sick of it.” It was his last message to her. While staring at the note, she thought about what Y had said about being bored. According to the body shop owner, Y had gotten a new bike recently. She headed for the road the owner had jotted down for her. The new road in front of Munhak Stadium was connected to the Yeongdong Expressway. The taxi driver stopped several times and asked where exactly in front of the stadium she’d meant. She also went looking for Y around the Jayu Motorway, but there weren’t any spots for the taxi to stop. Motorcycles sped along the night road. There were many that crossed the median line. The cab chased after them, but they were too fast. It wasn’t easy to find Y’s motorcycles from the others. Many members of the club stored their bikes at the body shop. The owner had pointed at one in the corner. “That there is Y’s new girlfriend.” Y’s girlfriend was a 1,450cc model, made of light titanium. If Y had gone around with a woman in the backseat, perhaps one with long hair, she would have been able to catch Y. She stuck a new message on the bulletin. “I’m so bored. Come back.” More than a week passed, but Y didn’t call. The clinic that had been recommended to her on the phone was small and shabby. There didn’t seem to be any women of childbearing age in the town where it was located. The clinic’s only patients were pregnant women who’d traveled from far away and a few bargirls. When she’d called, the nurse hadn’t bothered to ask her the basic questions, like how far along she was. But she added the woman would have to pay for the disposal of the specimen in addition to the surgery cost. She didn’t tell her mother. All her mother would say was that she was a stupid girl. The operating room had missing tiles and holes in the floor, like an old bathhouse. Perhaps her feet had swollen, but she felt better once she’d removed her shoes and climbed onto the operating table. There were metal containers containing bandages by the head of the bed. She placed her feet in the stirrups and lay down on the table. She saw black mold growing in a corner of the cement ceiling. Everything felt so surreal, as if it were someone else’s life. The stirrups felt cold. As her belly tightened, something squirmed inside. She decided to think it was a melon that was inside her belly. How could she have carried such a big thing around? The crash of stainless steel came from the consultation room, as if the staff were handling metal tools. She whispered to herself: “It’s okay. You tried your best.” The factory was quite far from Seoul. The reason she was able to get the job was because all the local young girls had left for the city. The boss added that there was no such thing as a maternity leave because of the worsening recession. Power saws operated non-stop from nine in the morning to nine at night. At first she couldn’t hear the person on the other end of the line because of the saws, but she got used to the noise soon enough. Naturally, her voice grew louder, too. When she would lie in bed at night, she’d hear the saw. Sometimes when she called, her elderly mother would complain and say she was about to go deaf. The factory was always full of itinerant workers. The boss didn’t care about the backgrounds of the workers, but she didn’t like dealing with them. Afraid she’d come across the man she’d bitten, she developed the habit of examining the arms of the new laborers. Even if no one else knew, the one bitten and the one who’d done the biting would no doubt recognize each other. A trailer loaded with North American oak arrived. The laborers who’d been scattered around the sawmill swarmed toward the trailer. A red pennant flag was attached to the end of the longest log on the flatbed. The center of the oak was light pink or dark brown. Compared to cherry wood, oak was easier to cut and nail down. The driver’s door opened and a giant sack of a man hopped down. His hair was disheveled, as if he’d had the windows rolled down. “Ah jeez, you were bitten by a dog?” After observing the scar on her wrist, he suddenly pulled up the hem of his pants and thrust his knee at her. “Look, a dog bit me, too. When they get a hold of something, they don’t let go,” he said with a wince. “If my scar is this big, imagine what happened to the dog! I made sure it would never chew meat again.” The logs on the flatbed matched up with the invoice. While she checked the flatbed, the man joked around, shaking his leg. “Excuse, but do I know you? I feel like we’ve met before.” She started heading back to the office, but he blocked her way. “I’m sure I’ve seen you before . . . Are you sure you don’t remember me?” His face was unfamiliar. He walked back to his trailer, hitting his gloves against his leg. The flatbed tilted up and logs spilled down onto the ground. The noise of the saws coming from the workshop was deafening. The driver came running, his belly bouncing. Very briefly, she recalled Hanil Trading’s sign hanging ceremony. But the man recognized her first. “Hanil Trading, right?” She recalled the Yankees baseball cap. “A?” The man looked disappointed. “You asked me how I’d gotten bitten by a dog. You were so cold you were shivering, so I even lent you my pullover.” It was H. But his face was unfamiliar. “It was a green waterproof pullover . . .” In the group photo, she’s wearing a green pullover. She has red eyes, for she’d been looking directly at the camera. So fixated on her red eyes, she must have forgotten about the borrowed pullover. She’d remembered A as being the only young factory worker there that day. He went on a reefer ship that February, just as he’d told her. About a year later, the company received a letter saying all traces of A had disappeared from an island in the South Pacific archipelago when his boat had been anchored at port. When the wooden sign was unwrapped from the newspaper, it smelled of fresh varnish. Some parts of the sign were sticky since the varnish hadn’t completely dried. People around the yard started to gather. The director raised the sign with a sly expression. Exactly ten years later, he had a heart attack. He always had the air of a traveler who had just stepped off the plane. The CEO was eventually conned by the assistant manager who’d looked like a sailor. Assistant Manager Lee had conspired with a friend at the American branch to steal some imported lumber. A year after the sign hanging ceremony, Hanil Trading began to fall into decline. The seventy plus employees dispersed and the name of the company disappeared from the trade newsletter. The factory’s sign that had been carved out of walnut wood was probably burned up a long time ago, used as firewood for some house. While learning photography, she learned that the red-eye effect tends to happen when the pupils are dilated. Why were my pupils dilated? Was it really me that Y had been watching through the viewfinder? Other female employees from the company had been standing next to her. Miss Kim, who resembled a cat, was very popular with the men. The woman’s gaze had been directed at some point beyond the frame. Was I really looking at Y? She couldn’t even remember borrowing H’s pullover twenty years ago. Y may not be the one she’s watching. Y takes a few steps back with the camera in his hands. He puts the camera up to his eye, hesitates, and backs up some more. Now he’s standing about five meters away from the group. The pasture spreads out behind him. As seventy plus people scuffle about, red dust rises to their knees. Above the pasture is the deep autumn sky. The workshop was built on what was once the paddock. The workshop door opens and a cow makes its way out of the paddock. Soon other cows come out of the paddock. The dairy cows amble toward the sheds. The woman blinks. The cows vanish and only their mooing lingers in the air. There is no pasture or workshop. What she is looking at is herself in twenty years. Her pupils are dilated. That’s when Y presses the shutter. The assistant manager, who’s dressed in a suit with gold buttons, backs up the car and parks in front of the factory entrance. The woman is looking for A to say goodbye. But she can’t find A or Goldie who had followed him around. Y looks as young as he had at the Incheon pier when he leapt between the logs that had arrived from North America. Several cars carrying the main office staff leave the factory and a cloud of red dust rises around the tires. She and Y cannot fathom how much they will change in twenty years. Her wrist is still smooth, unmarked with the dog’s bite. Nothing has happened yet. At this point, her belief that biting and being bitten is part of life has not yet taken root. In the pictures that Y has taken, a young H is wearing a green pullover—the same green pullover she’d borrowed and is wearing in the group photo. H’s face is still a stranger’s face. He leans forward, listening to what the factory manager is saying. When Y raises his camera, the factory manager waves his seven fingers. A part of the shed wall is showing. The white brim of a hat pokes out from the shed. Goldie’s tail seems to be showing below. A is hiding, watching the woman leave. She cannot remember H’s face for the life of her. It’s as if a man from the distant future has leapt into the past. She can’t remember the keloid scar H said he’d shown her. She calls out to Y, who is taking his sweet time. Her round forehead is smooth. She was at her most beautiful then. Translated by Janet Hong by Ha Seong-nan
The Phantom Schoolgirl Army The married couple next door invited me over for dinner last month. I had only ever exchanged silent greetings with my eyes, when one day we started talking; I was unable to refuse their sudden invitation. This was my first time exchanging names with anyone since moving down to Suncheon. Her name was Bo-kyeong Bu, and his was Mok-won Park. Both beautiful names. They had skipped the wedding, and said they had no plans for children. Like an idiot, I said they’d be even happier with kids—something I didn’t even believe. I wondered if an idiotic comment like this was the consequence of getting older or just a product of awkward interactions between strangers. I’d lived close to twenty years with a man myself; I didn’t have children, and I used to believe that I didn’t need them.They prepared some pollack roe pasta and a dish of stir-fried tomatoes and scrambled eggs. I chewed the food slowly as we sipped beer and conversed quietly. The food didn’t taste as good as it looked, and whenever I needed to laugh because they said something cute or funny, I had to be careful not to let bits of food escape my mouth.“I like that album, too,” Bo-kyeong said as she turned toward me.“Do you really?” Mok-won asked her.“Why are there so many things you don’t know about me?” Bo-kyeong glared at Mok-won with slivers for eyes.“There are a lot of advantages to being ignorant.” Mok-won laughed sheepishly as he looked at Bo-kyeong.Seeing these two bicker over my T-shirt, which had an Andy Warhol banana on it, I took out my phone, opened YouTube, and started playing “I’ll Be Your Mirror” from The Velvet Underground & Nico. They turned to me once the music started and smiled.Bo-kyeong brought over a Marshall Bluetooth speaker and connected it to my phone. As the two bobbed their heads and asked me a slew of questions, I became a DJ and played for them “Chelsea Girl” by Nico, “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” by Leonard Cohen, “I am a Fool” by Gilli Smyth, and “Hurt” by Johnny Cash. Mok-won got up from his seat and went over to the window. As soon as he opened it, a refreshing evening breeze entered the room and washed over us.“Do you mind?” Mok-won asked as he pulled out a cigarette. I shook my head.Bo-kyeong went over to the window as well.“Smells like summer. I think the air’s gotten cleaner. It must be because of COVID. Give me one.”He stuck a cigarette between her lips. The smoke consumed their heads. Unable to control myself, I went over to the window, too.“If you don’t mind—” As I exhaled a steady stream of smoke I continued: “My doctor told me I’ll die if I keep smoking.”They looked at me with wide eyes.“I’m just kidding. I quit four years ago.”“Maybe we should quit, too.”“You think so? Or maybe we just continue living this way till we die.”My doctor once told me I needed to quit both smoking and drinking. “What about the smell?” I asked the doctor. “Can’t I at least smell them?” The neurosurgeon frowned. “I’m not sure what to say. I don’t think I’ve ever had a patient ask me that before—”After staring out into the darkness for a while, I returned to my seat and played “Night Flight” by Affinity.“Can I call you Unni?” Bo-kyeong asked me as she came back with another beer from the refrigerator.“Of course not.”Bo-kyeong and Mok-won were both documentary filmmakers. They started living together after co-directing a film about Suncheon Bay. They’d moved their home and business to Suncheon earlier this year. Bo-kyeong’s hometown was in Incheon, and Mok-won’s in Seoul. I’d been born in Suncheon but left a long time ago; I only came back just two years prior. When I told them this, they batted their eyes, oohing and ahhing in admiration.“What did you use to do?” they asked me.“This and that. Whatever I could find.”“You seem like you have a lot of secrets. When I first saw you, I was a bit wary of you.”Bo-kyeong’s face was flush, probably from all the beer.Mok-won picked at the green tablecloth for a while before speaking up again. He was a bit tipsy and his voice was louder than before.“People are so strange. They criticize our experimental works for being too experimental, and our nature documentaries for having too many landscape shots. I wonder if they’ll accuse us of being too political this time.”“Why are you worrying about that already? We haven’t even started.”“What kind of documentary are you filming this time?” I asked.“Have you heard of the Phantom Schoolgirl Army?” Mok-won asked.“No.”“Don’t you have any older relatives in Yeosu or Suncheon?”“None.”“Stop it. You sound like you’re interrogating her,” Bo-kyeong said, critical of her husband’s tone.“It’s fine. What’s the Phantom Schoolgirl Army?”“You know about the Yeosu-Suncheon uprising, right?”Seeing the look on my face, which was saying neither yes or no, he began to explain.“In 1948, after suppressing the uprising in Yeosu and Suncheon, the government made something called the Writer Investigation party, which they dispatched to the area to ‘document’ what happened. The group was made of authors, painters, photographers, and illustrators. Among the things they found was a story of female students who’d fallen prey to communist ideology. According to these stories, the girls would lure soldiers to them with water and then pull out a carbine from their skirts and shoot the men. These stories were serialized in the papers and later made into a book titled Uprising and the Resolve of the People. Oh, that reminds me, Bo-kyeong. We must find that book. Anyway, the book was used for political purposes, to fear monger and justify the massacres. It was recently revealed that the story, which was referred to as the Phantom Schoolgirl Army, was actually a made-up story—it never happened. But they didn’t know that at the time, so it continued to be told and embellished. There were also stories of schoolgirls who seduced soldiers, calling them oppa and what not, before shooting them with a Type 99 rifle. All of these were different versions of the same story intended to frighten people about the threat of communism.”“They say some schoolgirls were arrested and interrogated,” Bo-kyeong said, adding onto her husband’s explanation. “We want to interview those who are still alive. But COVID has made that difficult. Perhaps we could do it virtually. Of course, we’d need to be cautious when approaching them, as it’s probably a traumatic experience for them. I’m positive that the stories were influenced by the war films and novels of the time. I want to find those sources. It’s a really strange and terrifying story.”“I think my mother must have been attending school in Yeosu around that time.”“Really?”“She died, though. When I was young.”Silence filled the room. After turning on the song “I Hate You” by Jung-in—like a person who believes there’s a song for every situation—I played one last song: “Restless” by Bibi, which was one of my favorite K-pop songs at the time. Bo-kyeong vibed to the music, and Mok-won cleared the table.“How about we go to your place next time,” Bo-kyeong suggested as they saw me out the front gate.“Of course not.”“Then it’s settled,” Bo-kyeong said in a cutesy voice while she locked arms with Mok-won, as if to say she understood my sarcasm. “Treat us to some more good music.” That night, I went back to my place and searched up the Phantom Schoolgirl Army. There were only a few articles. I used my finger to select an article published way back on October 24, 2001 by OhmyNews titled “What’s the truth behind the Phantom Schoolgirl Army?” I perused the article before my eyes stopped on a picture. A group of schoolgirls wearing jeogori, sailor blouses, and overcoats were huddled together. The caption read, “Students from Yeosu Girls High School apprehended for conspiring with insurgency forces.” I tried unsuccessfully to zoom into the picture with my fingers. I used Google Images to find another image of the photo. Some of the girls in the picture were very young. I carefully examined each picture, wondering if my mother was among them. Eyes staring into the camera, drooping heads, and faces outside the frame.I hadn’t quite realized it before, but not having a single picture of my mother was a large void in my life. The irritated person who refused to open up to me and would only protect her own territory. The person who remembered every birthday and death anniversary of my older brother, whom I’d never met. The person who would talk back even as her own mother grabbed her by the hair and called her a commie bitch. The person who threw a wooden ash tray at her husband, who was four years younger than her. The person who’d told her daughter, who was bleeding in the head from being hit by the ash tray, “It’s all right,” and “It didn’t break.” The ash and cigarette butts had scattered across the floor.“But it did break. Don’t you know?”The violet curtains hanging from the window rustled from the silence of my voice. As I touched the scar above my eyebrow, now nothing but a faint memory, I got ready for bed earlier than usual. I made a quilt for the couple next door, but I can’t meet them to give it to them. I put the quilt in my bag whenever I go out, thinking I might run into them on the street. It’s been more than a month. I ring their doorbell, but there’s no answer; I never hear the sound of the door opening or closing. Even as I think to myself that they must be out of town because their blue Chevrolet Spark is missing, I sense something is off. So, whenever I go out of the house, I knock on the door and peer through the window, but the blinds always prevent me from seeing inside.Why didn’t we exchange numbers? I start to wonder if they ever existed at all. As I do this, I realize that there’s no one to call me affectionately by my name. My name is Cha-jeong Lee. But my name isn’t Cha-jeong Lee. I have no name, no friends.My friends, there are no friends.That’s what Coco Chanel said. And before her, there was Aristotle. Deleuze and Derrida, even Agamben quoted Aristotle. After reading Agamben’s essay “The Friend,” I was going to send him an email. I was going to declare that we should break up, but our relationship had long been over. Thinking to myself that we could maintain a long-distance phantom relationship by exchanging letters of friendship, I wrote an email so light-hearted you might think we’d broken up only yesterday. Only after sending the message did I learn that his email address had been deleted and no longer existed. Was he just a phantom now? Of course, I could figure out what he was up to by asking around, but I abandoned the idea. Ten years have passed since then.Today is his birthday. He is probably slurping up seaweed soup somewhere or burying his face in a cake. Or perhaps he’s staring vacantly out the window at the rain, having forgotten all about his birthday. Idiot. It rains. It’s July 25, a Saturday, and the forecast for the entire country is rain. Is there a reason, a context for why people are attracted to other people, why they get sick of them, why they reminisce about them? I think again about the couple next door. I think about what they said about context.“People read context less and less these days.”“It doesn’t matter. We must make context.”“How about just removing context?”“If that were possible—”“And what if it is?”“It’s not.”“There are lots of things you can’t explain with context.”“There will always be people who search for context, whatever you create.”“So many people get the context all wrong!”“The blind spot of context!”“The context of blind spots!”“Stop! We sound like idiots.”“What if instead of calling it context, we called it Lucky?”“What?”I couldn’t tell if their eyes were drawing me closer or pushing me away. What was the Lucky of that thing called friends? But before that, I had to find my own Lucky. Whenever I thought about things like that, I’d be reminded of Flora Simone’s words.Tell your story. Be true to you. Don’t make a mockery of other people’s lives.With these words, I decided to survey myself and the lucky things that surround me. I wanted to recall things from the past and summon the scenes of oblivion that I’d missed. Even if you call the time that one waits after the doors of memory open until they find the reason for their oblivion, the context of their oblivion, the Lucky of their oblivion—even if you call it time overwhelmed with regret and grief, can regret and grief not create a spark? We’re not holding onto our heads, which might be destroyed at any moment, as we try to tidy up our pasts. In fact, life is impossible to tidy up. Can’t we keep chasing that spark? On the bamboo blanket on my bed are fallen breadcrumbs and fragments of the body. What’s happening inside my body every night? The time of a machine-like body is fair to everyone, so when I get up after lying down for a while, it feels like the right and left halves of my body have swapped, and my two feet, which feel distant, are telling me to go somewhere. This happens even more often on rainy days. I throw the pillow at the ceiling. The ceiling is miles away from me, and the pillow falls back down to me slowly. Some days, the pillow remains suspended in air. I enjoy the destruction of time.The more my body deteriorates, the sharper my mind becomes. With lucid and perceptive eyes, I see through objects and phenomena. My hair stands on end. I imagine a tiny universe being contained within each strand of hair. Every day, universes explode, and new ones are born. A tempest of dust rises. The larger the tornado, the better I see. I dab the physiological tears hanging from the corners of my eyes with the sleeve of my Gucci Mickey Mouse pajamas and realize with a smile that I’m not yet dead. Time enjoys my destruction.“Détruire, dit-elle.”I mutter the title of Marguerite Duras’s film to myself. Destroy, She Said.“Duras will always remain at your side.”I can hear his voice. Spring, 2010. Two months after announcing our breakup, he finally packed his things and left. In September later that year, I saw every film shown at the Duras Film Festival, hosted by the CineCode Sonje in Anguk-dong. I ran into the same people several times during the film festival. And during the showing of India Song, people looked back at me several times because I was unable to stop coughing. The sound of my frequent coughing became a secondary voice-over for the film. I wonder, Were the coughs a form of sobbing? People who chased the traces of the rustling light in that film, that boring and dark, boring and bright, boring and hot, boring and cold, boring and hideous, boring and beautiful, boring and exotic, boring and erotic, boring and close, boring and distant, boring and remote, boring and drowsy film. Among those people who closed their eyes for a second to be transported to another world, some of them must have already erased their bodies from this life. I wake, make my bed, comb my hair, and shower, after which I lean against the window and look out toward Suncheon Stream in the distance, into which rain is falling. I don’t see anyone. Nor do I see any animals. Or phantoms. I hear the footsteps of the people I can’t see, of the animals and phantoms I can’t see. As I follow those sounds, I find in the distance my two feet.Today, I have something to think about, I have somewhere to go, I have something to do, I have something to forget, and I must disappear. I go to Cinema Gwangju. It will be a lengthy excursion. I haven’t been to the cinema for a long time because of COVID. This is my first time going to Cinema Gwangju since coming to Suncheon. I’d had plans to go there once I moved here even before the pandemic, but I never got around to it. I got exhausted just walking around the city.Once a month, they hold a “One Day Cinema” event in which they play long movies that aren’t possible in regular theatre settings. The first One Day Cinema will feature Miguel Gomes’s Arabian Nights trilogy. There are some movies that you must watch in theatres to get the full experience. This is especially true for ultra-long films. Last year, after two back-to-back viewings of Miguel Gomes’s Tabu on my laptop, I was unable to sleep, and once I saw the news about Arabian Nights through Cinema Gwangju’s Instagram page, I started counting the days. Even though I was worried that I couldn’t make it to the end—I was afraid that my brains cells would become overloaded and my eyes would become blurry until I was trapped in darkness—before I knew it, my two feet were already walking about the cinema.Yesterday, I took out my favorite pair of Twin Peaks-themed socks, which I’d shipped to Korea. Because my feet are always cold, I always wear ankle-high socks, even in the summer. There’s nothing better than the feeling of putting on a new pair of socks—a feeling so sublime I can’t even put words to it. I’m a member of a group that believes that changing socks can change your mood. Who was the person who first invented socks? And were they the first person who wore socks, too? Or had they invented socks for someone else? I wonder what it must have felt like for them, that first person who put on socks. Were they floored by their invention? I wouldn’t be surprised if I was that person in some past life. So, who was the first sock-wearer in history? There are so many questions about humanity that will never be answered. A life spent slowly and methodically trying to answer these questions would be an interesting life. If possible, I’d like to make the act of putting my feet into socks something that can be repeated endlessly, until the end of time.Sewn along the top of the pair of socks are the words “FIRE WALK WITH ME,” a famous quote from the movie. When the socks stretch around my calves, the text warps. A fire of language ignites. I imagine for a moment watching Twin Peaks season three with him, the two of us wearing matching socks. The more impossible and vain an imaginative thought, the better. I first met him in 1992, at the occasionally held “Progressive & Underground Music Concert” in the Koa Musical Gallery on the second floor of the Koa Art Hall in Jongno. I’d seen him several times there and finally decided to make a move. We had tea, ate, watched movies, went on walks, explored each other’s bodies, and then decided to live together. His family was living in Toronto, Canada. On the other hand, I barely talked to my father after leaving Suncheon, and was currently working at a company after graduating from college with both a degree and a patent attorney certification. Teaching French language education at a university, he was two centimeters taller than me, but because of his small frame, we wore the same size clothes. We were like sisters who liked the same music and shared the same clothes, and we spent our time like arcade brats once our soul-sucking labor responsibilities to society—a.k.a. our jobs—finally ended. We traded off sleeping at each other’s place for a while until we got a house in Seongbuk-dong near Simujang—the historic house of the poet Han Yong-un—with a small courtyard that bloomed with beautiful trumpet flowers.We watched Twin Peaks, which aired on KBS 2TV in 1993, without missing a single episode. We would turn off the lights in the living room and watch those strange, absurd, and nightmarish videos on a red television set, and sometimes we’d make love on the hard floor when the show ended. One time when I mounted him and wrapped my hands around his neck, he curled his lips and said, “Le feu marche avec toi.” His facial expression looked like it belonged to a loveable idiot—perhaps someone like Robin Gibb from the Bee Gees. I answered this with a line from Yi Sang’s poem, “I Wed a Toy Bride”: “You smell, dear, just like a newborn babe.” After that, I wrapped my fingers a bit tighter around his neck and rocked back and forth. As he struggled, he accidentally kicked the TV stand, causing the TV to come crashing to the ground, sending sparks everywhere and filling the air with smoke. Despite being naked in a room that smelled of burning electronics, we couldn’t stop laughing. Fire was always walking alongside us.The next day, we went to Hwanghak-dong, bought a used TV, stopped by Dol Record Store to say hi to the owner, picked out a few old LPs, ate a bowl of anchovy noodles, then came back home. Despite not liking alcohol that much, he drank a whole can of beer, then with a flushed face, he placed on the turntable an album of the Norwegian band LeopoldLeopoldobeach, music which brought us great jouissance. He placed the needle on the song “beach B.” Did he want to start another fire? I wondered. I took a marker and wrote “No Fire! No Sound!” on one of the cathode ray tubes from the broken TV that we’d left out as decoration, and then hugged the TV. He lay down with his stomach on the floor. He wriggled his body. He crawled on the floor like the unnamable moving voice from Samuel Beckett’s novel L’Innommable, which he’d once tried unsuccessfully to translate into Korean, just for me. A while later, he came toward me, rubbed his face against the TV, then started to cry. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” I asked him as I played with the cord like a whip. There was a candid reflection of the two of us in the mirror. I wrinkled my eyebrows as if I was watching that nonsensical experimental play we saw together in Toronto, which was the first and last time I would see his parents; I then spread my legs and tried to hug him and the TV tighter. I thought to myself that one day in the future, when I became overcome with insanity and melancholy, all of this would feel like a distant dream. Even then, we would be nothing.After we broke up, I worked for four more years at the company, then quit to travel South America and Europe for two years. When I came back, I felt pain in my head, as though something was bursting, and collapsed on the street. After receiving cerebral aneurysm surgery and being discharged from the hospital, I packed up my life in Seoul. Before changing my name to Cha-jeong Lee and moving to Suncheon, I bought myself a pair of Gucci Mickey Mouse pajamas, either to compensate myself for past time or to buy a shroud to cover myself. I had a lingering quiver in my left eye from the brain surgery, and sometimes my vision would suddenly blur, making it hard to see what was in front of me. My doctor told me that in bad cases, people lost their sight completely. The doctor warned me to be careful, that if I damaged my optical nerve again, I could have a cerebral hemorrhage. While watching the third season of the Twin Peaks TV series, which came out twenty-five years after the film, I thought to myself that I wasn’t the only one who was getting older, that I wasn’t the only one with a hole in my head. I cried as I watched David Lynch’s Weather Report on YouTube, in which he’d wake up every morning in LA, don the same clothes, and say, “Beautiful blue skies and golden sunshine.”After going through a transition period, I started a new daily routine in which I would go on the internet to read, watch, or listen to the bizarre things that I used to enjoy. I welcomed the various changes in visual and auditory media brought about by the accelerating age of electronics, and experiencing and enjoying the new forms of functional and aesthetic material consumption was an act that breathed life into my dying flesh. I figured time for me would stop once the balance in my bank account reached zero, but as I spent more time as an idle loner, I began to look forward to the moment that I would accept the future that would be extinguished as a Lucky for my life, to the time of another change and the end of the world. I put on the T-shirt I had custom-made for me with a picture of the score of John Cage’s “4’ 3”” printed on it, throw over a green cardigan, a pair of cream-colored linen slacks and sneakers, then leave the house with an umbrella. There are several letters in the mailbox next door. I ring the doorbell. No sign of anyone. I kick the front gate. My leg slips through the bars and trespasses into their courtyard. I pick up a rock from the alley and throw it at the window. The rock disappears as the window absorbs it. I pick up another rock and throw that. The rock is again absorbed by the window. I throw several more rocks, but the result never changes. I stride over to a large, sharp rock in the distance, feel its edges for a moment, then stick out my tongue to have a taste. Electricity jumps from the rock to the tip of my tongue.When I exit the alley, a stray, rain-soaked dog is loitering about. Our eyes meet for a moment. If it’s still here when I come back, I’ll take it in. “You can’t come back,” the stray says, as if reading my mind.I take my time walking to Suncheon Terminal and get on a bus for Gwangju, about two hours away. There are three people sitting in the bus with masks on, and in a few more seats are phantoms without masks. As I stare out the window at the thin streaks of rain falling from the sky, I think of the first time I went to Gwangju with my father, all those years ago. One Sunday morning in late autumn, 1980, my father suggested we go to Gwangju.“Why?”“To see a movie.”“But we have Cinema Mammoth here in Suncheon.”“Hurry up and get changed.”“I’m scared. I heard a lot of people died.”“Who said that?”“Everyone.”“It’s fine now.”There was a Hyundai Pony pick-up truck parked outside. My father casually opened the car door and told me to get in. He said that he was borrowing the truck from a friend, but as far as I knew, he didn’t know how to drive. He took out a pack of Taeyang cigarettes from the pocket of his leather jacket, stuck one in his mouth, and started the car. Soldiers stopped us several times to question us on our way through Hwasun to Gwangju. Whenever this happened, he grabbed my hand and contorted his face into a smile as he kowtowed. As soon as they motioned us on, he let go of my hand and sucked on his cigarette until his dimples appeared. I played with the window, rolling it up and down, until my father threw his cigarette out the window and spoke to me.“Quit it.”Gwangju city center was quiet, probably because it was Sunday. And the streets were clean, unlike the rumors I’d heard. I wondered if I could glean any information from people’s faces. I had to turn my head left and right to see the signboards of an unfamiliar city. My father patiently surveyed the surroundings before turning the wheel and parking the truck on the corner of the street next to the cinema. I followed him into the building. He greeted the woman at the ticketing booth as though he knew her.“How are ya?”She chewed on gum as she gave him an unimpressed stare.Once we were in the lobby of the cinema, there appeared a passageway that continued outside. On the wall of an empty lot were several layers of movie posters. My father opened the rusted iron door to a warehouse; once inside, a strong smell of paint hit my nose. A man was painting the sign to the cinema, and when he saw my father, made a look of surprise and got to his feet. My father took out a cigarette and offered it to the man, who came over and clenched my father’s leather jacket.“How are ya?”“Don’t get me started. My tongue might fall off.”“Well, we can talk outside.”My father glanced over at me.“She’s looking more and more like her mother,” the man said. “Do you remember me? I was at your mother’s funeral last year.”He was wearing a camo jacket with blotches of paint everywhere. He touched my head. His body was giving off a smell that I couldn’t quite place my finger on.“Is this movie suitable for kids?” my father asked.“It’s an oldie. You haven’t seen it? I’m sure it’s okay for middle school students. It’s a good watch, and she can learn a bit of history, too.”“Enjoy the movie,” my father said to me.“Can I go to the bathroom first?”Without answering, the man and my father opened the door to the theatre and pushed me inside through the thick curtains. It was pitch black. I stuck my head into the darkness in front of my eyes. Smelling cigarettes, perfume, and mildew, I started groping around for an empty seat, but lost my footing and almost fell over. I lowered my head, sat down, and then waited for my heart, which was racing for some reason, to calm down. Towards the middle of the movie, the actress wearing a blue qipao shot beastly men with a gun.“Listen carefully,” she said. “Are you going to put words into your brain, or are you going to put lead into your brain?”Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness surrounding the projection screen, I was able to see the inside of the auditorium and found that most of the seats were empty. And even though the current scene was anything but sad, someone was sobbing. No one was saying anything to them. The heroine taught the bandits how to read and write, became the head of the band of thieves, killed her father, and was seeking revenge on the Japanese soldier who hurt her, but in the second half, there was more and more contextless violence and sex, and the movie eventually turned adulterous and primitive, with scenes of men forcing themselves onto women. Only when it ended did I learn the title of the movie: The Lady Bandit. My father wasn’t in the cinema lobby. A small number of shadowy faces were leaving the theatre, and bright faces were coming into the theatre for the next showing. Seeing me loitering, the woman from the ticketing booth spoke to me.“I guess you’ve been abandoned.”She gave me a smile and a stick of gum. I just nodded and didn’t accept her token of consolation.A while later, my father and the man from earlier came into the theatre.“Good movie, huh?” the man asked me. “Take care of your dad and study hard to become a good woman, just like the one in that movie.”I gave him a look that said neither yes or no.“Let’s go home.”My father smelled of booze and onions. He handed me a bag with a bun inside.He didn’t say a word on the drive home. I ripped off pieces of the red bean bun to eat as I stared out at the blazing sun, which threatened to lay waste to the horizon.A few days later on my way home from school, I stood in the middle of the bridge above Suncheon Stream staring at the ripples in the water as I recited to myself one of the lines from The Lady Bandit.“Listen carefully. Are you going to put words into your brain, or are you going to put lead in your brain?”Nor did I forget what her father said to the spy for the Japanese army.“Shut your mouth before I put a lead bullet in your gut. If you try something, your entrails will be crawling out of your side.”This reminded me of something my mother had said.“There were entrails crawling on the street.”My mother would sometimes mutter this to herself without context. Something light hit the back of my head. I turned around, but there was no one there, no crumpled-up piece of paper on the ground, no waterfowl that had been flying too low. But that was obvious. Waterfowl didn’t come here.“Where the ocean waves wash away the waterfowl tracks, the song of the conch digs deep into my heart and the sound of the waves carries it away. Aaaa, Aaaa, Aaaa.”As I walked slowly through downtown Suncheon, I thought of the song “Sea, Conch, Waterfowl” by Jung Mijo which my mother used to sing, squatting on the back porch as she stared out into the distance.I went into my father’s photography studio and immediately picked up the kettle to drink some water. The water dribbled down my chin, wetting my school uniform and neck. He was nowhere in sight. The turntable had reached the end of the album, and the needle was now spinning vainly about the middle of the record and making scratchy popping sounds. This was the record that contained one of my father’s favorite Bee Gees’ songs, “I Started a Joke.” I stared down at the exhausted record for a while before lifting the needle and placing it back on the rest. There wasn’t a picture of my mother to be found anywhere in the studio. I pulled back the velvet curtains of violet and went further into the recesses of the studio. The passageway was only a few strides long, but it felt like I was walking forever. I pressed the black button next to the door outside the dark room. A moment later, the door open and my father stepped out.“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be headed home?” he asked. His eyes were bloodshot. He pulled out a Taeyang cigarette from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. I asked him a question.“Is it true Mom died?” After I left home to attend university in the capital, some of the upperclassmen showed me the Gwangju video. After seeing that, I was positive that my father had taken me with him to Gwangju so that he could pass the checkpoints with ease. The memories returned to my head one after another, all the way up to the point when I ran out of the music club room because the upperclassmen demanded I tell them my reaction after watching the video. For a long time, I’d mistakenly thought that the place where I watched The Lady Bandit was the real Cinema Gwangju. When I told him I had been to Cinema Gwangju in 1980, he looked at me in surprise and told me to tell him everything that happened that day. As I told my story, I embellished, probably to fill all the holes in my memory. In August of 2003, we went down to Gwangju because he said he wanted to watch the films that were being shown in memory of João César Monteiro at the Gwangju International Film Festival. We got a room at the Gwangju Mudeung Hotel and wandered through downtown. Only when we finally arrived outside Cinema Gwangju did I realize it wasn’t the place that existed in my memories. But then at which cinema did I watch The Lady Bandit?After that, I always went down with him to Cinema Gwangju when they were showing rare movies. We’d sit in the empty show rooms and make love with our lips and hands. In 2015 after we broke up, I watched Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn by myself; I hadn’t been back to the Cinema Gwangju since. When I saw the sign for Cinema Gwangju, my heart started to race. I stood across the street and stared at the entirety of the building for a while before walking toward the ticketing booth. After someone took my temperature, I wrote my name down on the visitor log, only to realize I’d written down my previous name. I corrected it to Cha-jeong Lee. I bought tickets to all three movies and went inside. I perused the cinema’s souvenir shop then went up the stairs and examined the historic pictures hanging on the left side of the second-floor lobby. There was a picture titled “1971 Prayer Room” and a caption explaining that the men in the picture were thugs hired to maintain order at the theatre. Feeling like I recognized one of the men, I took out my phone and snapped a picture. After that, I went to the second-floor balcony and waited as I stared outside.“Ahh, the smell of Cinema Gwangju—”As soon as I went into the auditorium, I was hit with that distinct smell. There were a few people dispersed throughout the seats. I sat down and took out my glasses from my bag. The lights went out and the movie started. It seemed like there was a technical problem because I had to squint to read the subtitles toward the right of the screen. This seemed like a premonition of the migraine to come. I saw someone sitting in the first row of the second level of the auditorium, adjusting the subtitles with their laptop. I wondered if I would be able to make it to the end. After successfully watching all of Arabian Nights – Volume 1: The Restless One, I came out of the cinema, entered a restaurant in Chungjang-ro, and ordered a roll of kimbap minus the pickled radish. When I was done, I went over to Gwangju Stream and stared at the nearby ripples in the water for a while before heading back to the cinema to watch Arabian Nights – Volume 2: The Desolate One. When my eyes started to feel strained, I would close my eyes and doze off for a bit. I’d made up my mind to watch each film to the end, even if it meant my head would explode with pain. When I came out after finishing volume two, the rain had stopped. I saw the person who’d been fixing the subtitles ride past on his bicycle. I went to a local convenience store to buy some vegetable juice, and then I went to Gwangju Stream again to stare at the distant ripples for a while before heading back to the cinema, perusing the souvenirs again, and then going up to the second floor and taking my seat. There was a new person working on the subtitles.Volume 3: The Enchanted One ended. All the subtitles disappeared, the lights turned on, and I became the last viewer in the seats. I finally stood up and headed down to the first floor. The person who had been adjusting the subtitles for volumes one and two asked me if I saw all three parts. When I said I had, they gave me a card and told me that next time I came to One Day Cinema and made it through all the films, I would receive a small gift. On the card were the words “Arabian Nights (July – 6 hours 21 minutes)” as well as a list of the up-coming showings, complete with miniature film posters and running times: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour (August – 5 hours 17 minutes), Wang Bing’s Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (September – 9 hours 17 minutes), Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó (October – 7 hours 18 minutes). This alone felt like a gift. I went outside. Night and the front of the cinema. The only people on the sidewalk were moviegoers who had just left the theatre and were dispersing in both directions. But my feet wanted to stay put. Just as I wondered to myself how I was going to disappear, someone poked me in the back.“Unni, is that you? It is you!”“Oh, Bo-kyeong.”“Mok-won! Over here!” Bo-kyeong called out to her husband, who was late coming out of the cinema. He’d changed his hairstyle into a crop cut since the last time I’d seen the two.“Wow, what are the chances of bumping into you here?” Bo-kyeong said.“Did you watch all three movies?” Mok-won asked. “We got here late and were only able to see volumes two and three.”As we waited for Mok-won to bring the car over from the parking lot next to the cinema, I took out the quilt from my bag and handed it to Bo-kyeong. She exclaimed several times about how beautiful it was and how she loved it. She explained that they’d been staying in Seoul because Mok-won’s mother had passed away. On their way back to Suncheon, they stopped by Gyeongju and now Gwangju.I sat in the back of their blue Spark. It smelled of eucalyptus. There was a Snoopy doll clipped to the air vent. Bo-kyeong reenacted her excitement from earlier as she showed Mok-won the quilt.“Isn’t the pattern beautiful?”Mok-won turned to me and bowed his head in thanks.“Mok-won,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”“Thank you,” he said in a low voice.There were several black books lying in the back seat.“We finally found them.” Bo-kyeong turned around once she noticed me touching the books. “That’s why we stopped in Gyeongju. They were at the library at Dongguk University’s Gyeongju campus this whole time.”“Can I take a look?”“Knock yourself out. You can have one, if you want. We made several copies just in case.”There was nothing written on the front or back covers, which were plain black. When I turned past the first page I found the title written vertically in a mix of Chinese and Korean characters, ÚäÕ¯°ú ÚÅðéÀÇ ÊÆçö, beneath which was the trace of a label that read “Donated by Professor. . .” I recognized the characters immediately as “Uprising and the Resolve of the People.” Inside the darkness of the car, I had no problem seeing the disturbing yet blurry images.“The original was in such poor condition. A lot of copies had been printed and distributed initially. But most of them have been thrown away, I guess.”We exited Gwangju and got onto the highway.“Do you want to watch Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour in August together?” Bo-kyeong asked.“Sure.”“Have you seen Asako I & II, as well?”“No.”She handed me a headphone jack which was connected to the car’s auxiliary port.“Treat us to some music.”I took the cord, connected it to my phone, and thought for a moment before opening YouTube and playing “Say You, Say Me” by Lionel Richie.“Hey, wasn’t this song in volume two?” Mok-won said.“I thought I’d heard the song before. Is it famous?” Bo-kyeong asked.“When this song came on, I laughed out loud,” I said. “It was just so out of context.”“Oh, I remember hearing someone laugh.”“Have you seen Miguel Gomes’s Tabu?” I asked.“Yes.”“No.”The two of them gave their answers simultaneously.I played for them “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star, “Over” by Portishead, and “Lumbini” by Oh Ji Eun. They listened to the music as I stared at the music videos on my phone, which all happened to be continuous black-and-white images. When the music ended, Bo-kyeong continued to sing one of the lines from the last song: “. . . but I just walking walking. . .” I didn’t need to turn on any more music at this point. They must have been exhausted because they were quiet, too. If I was able to return home, and if that stray dog was still hanging around the alley next to my house, I would name it Dixie, after the phantom dog from Arabian Nights. After an extended silence, Bo-kyeong opened the glove compartment and pulled something out.“Want some gum?”“No thanks.”It was almost 11 pm when we passed Songgwangsa tollgate and it started to rain again. The car continued straight past the exit for west Suncheon. Bo-kyeong stared at the side of Mok-won’s face. He was gripping the wheel with two hands, and a black, sparkling light was falling on his short cut hair. The Snoopy doll on the air vent fell to the floor. The quilt I’d made for them was lying on the dash. Bo-kyeong and I met eyes through the rearview mirror. The front wipers were making the sound of Squeegees. One by one, the vehicles on the road disappeared, and before long I couldn’t even see the lamps above the highway. My left eyelid started to quiver. I opened the window and stuck my head into the darkness before my eyes.“I want to find them, too. The Phantom Schoolgirl Army.”Bo-kyeong and Mok-won looked back at me.* Translated by Sean Lin Halbert by Kim Tae Yong
Two Poems by Chang Seung Ri After gaze of a dying pig next to a dead piga rainbow drained of yellow the moment I am filled by the hole that pierces through the mirror I merry-go-roundto the childhood of the end forward, forwardsince tears are round when are you saddest?when I laugh like a child Gnu Herd Cross the river with your death as a shield – Grief asks why nothingness fears annihilation by Chang Seung Ri Translated by Hedgie Choi by Chang Seung Ri
Circle of Light Sumin heard from Jeong-woo while she was reading a concert program that began: “Enrique Granados disliked traveling.” She’d seen a banner ad for the solo piano recital on a reservations site and bought a ticket on impulse. The pianist performed seven pieces by Granados, playing for over seventy minutes without an intermission. He received long, loud waves of applause, but he did not grant the audience’s request for an encore even though he came back to the stage three or four times. He placed his right hand on his heart, maybe to ask them to understand that another song could spoil the lingering feeling. Sumin came out of the auditorium and was walking around the foyer when, belatedly, she purchased the program. She put it in her bag and forgot about it until the bright orange color suddenly came to mind a few days later, and she perused it carefully.The Spanish composer Enrique Granados disliked travel, only leaving his home country twice. At age twenty, he went to Paris to study, but he contracted typhoid fever and the trip ended in disappointment. He took his second and final trip in the spring of his forty-ninth year, when he went to the US for the premiere performance of an opera. It was during WWI, and the ocean liner that he and his wife took for their return voyage was attacked by a German U-boat. The ship cracked apart. Granados had the good luck to be rescued, but when he saw his wife struggling, he dived into the water to save her, and they both ended up drowning. The write-up went on to add that Granados was especially scared of boats. Working as an editor for the last six years, Sumin had the habit of searching for the crucial point of any kind of texts. In this case, she struggled whether to locate it in the tragedy sensed beforehand, or in love overcoming the fear of death. Ultimately, for her, the main point was that she’d only found out the context for the story after the concert had finished. She’d attended the recital without knowing anything beforehand, not even that the suite Goyescas meant “in the style of Goya,” having been inspired by Goya’s paintings. Sumin frequently learned things after the fact; this had also been true when she studied in France. The feeling of time passing extremely slowly—that was the first thing that came to mind about that period seven years ago. It was a different feeling from boredom. Because she had such an acute sense of time, her impressions of it were more exact, just as an athlete with excellent dynamic vision can feel a speeding arrow pass by more slowly. Each day she finished four hours of study at the language school and attended a special writing class at extra cost or an open lecture on art history. The French level was so high that she could hardly make out any words besides the ones she’d learned in liberal arts classes at home, like “Surrealism” or “avant-garde.” She had time left over after that, and for once in her life, no money worries either. Not only was her mother enjoying some financial breathing room and sending her a monthly living allowance, but she’d also saved a sizeable amount of money working part-time while attending university. She wanted above all to learn French, but in practice, she felt buried under a variety of routines. Every little thing became magnified. She felt like she had become part of a giant painting of daily life in which every detail continued to expand. When she became somewhat familiar with the area around the language school, she began to walk endlessly along the riverbank, following the second-hand book stalls. Walking along, her gaze alternating between the tourist boats cutting through the murky, shallow water and the stall keepers selling used books in a line along the riverbank, she’d find herself at the Palais Garnier. She’d look around at the resplendent buildings, stop in at a Korean grocery store, buy ramyeon or instant curry, and head home. Then, time permitting, she’d go to a concert. Discounted tickets would be sold just before the show in the case of cancellations or seats with a restricted view. Jeong-woo, her roommate, told her this. She informed her that if you topped this off with a student discount, the ticket would cost no more than a sandwich. Jeong-woo exhorted her to learn about discounts and freebies, adding that this knowledge wasn’t just the right of a visiting student, but a duty. Jeong-woo had been studying there for four years. As a female East Asian international student, there were ordeals you faced many times daily, like government officials glaring at you as if you were trying to sneak into their country, innocent-looking teens shouting abuse like “Bitch!” or “Whore!” and nonstop sexual advances from men on the street, so she said that using your student discount to access art and culture in the city was not so much an expression of enjoyment as a protest. Sumin liked Jeong-woo’s logic, perceiving the gap between the low status of a foreign student and the beauty and elegance in appreciating classical art as something to fight and overcome, rather than as vanity or extravagance. This period was full of uncommon scenery in the greater context of Sumin’s life, but strangely, when she reminisced, her clearest memories were of routines, and Jeong-woo was ever present. Sumin was a morning person, and it was only around the time she started her day that Jeong-woo would gently place her empty beer bottles by the kitchen trash can and prepare for bed. Though her voice and movements were bold, Jeong-woo walked light as a feather. She told Sumin to walk on tiptoe or the woman below would come up one day and do away with them both. Jeong-woo often overslept and missed her language classes but since she had perfect attendance at the private atelier class she took for five euros, she was able to enter the École des Beaux Arts, the school of her choice, the same year that Sumin finished language classes and returned home. As far as Sumin knew, Jeong-woo had only gone back to Korea once, in the summer break after her second year at the École des Beaux Arts. She hadn’t been home for six years or so before that, ashamed to show her face to her family. She ended her long exile only after entering the École des Beaux Arts. Sumin reunited with Jeong-woo at a chicken soup restaurant in Jongno. Sumin had been back for two years. It was a very simple place with only one item on the menu. Sumin had just found a full time job, and she would rather have taken her Unni to a cleaner, brighter Korean or Italian restaurant where they could chat comfortably for a while, but she could not prevail against Jeong-woo, who dearly wished to try the soup she’d seen on television several years earlier.Even now she could recall Jeong-woo’s expression as she was gazing at the chicken in a large metal bowl. The whole chicken was placed intact in the broth, and the server lifted it out with a pair of tongs and expertly divided it into pieces with kitchen scissors. Jeong-woo watched closely, her cheeks flushed, maybe from the heat from the tabletop gas burner. She probably hadn’t had the chance to eat proper kimchi for a long time, and when Sumin pushed the side dishes towards her, she looked around and said shyly, “Sumin-a, Korean chickens are small and adorable, aren’t they?”Sumin was on the KTX train bound for Gyeongju when she recalled the sentence, “Enrique Granados disliked traveling.” Was this true about Granados? Perhaps the article was just a biographer’s attempt to give his life meaning by twisting coincidence into destiny. Perhaps he did dislike traveling, but not because he thought a trip would cut his life short. Maybe it was because the uncontrolled variables in unfamiliar environments were an inconvenience.If there was anyone who believed that traveling could change one’s life, it was Sumin. She’d decided to study abroad for this reason. But all that awaited her upon her return to Seoul was her small room and her school, which felt unfamiliar to her now that her close friends had all graduated and left. Whereas the year’s worth of experiences may have constituted an adventure to Sumin, her stories were perfectly ordinary to those around her. Even within her own department, several students had studied a language abroad. She hadn’t had enough time to become fluent in French, and she hadn’t even begun a romantic relationship of the kind her friends had anticipated. The ending had been quite flat. After her return, her professor gave her vague advice to keep both feet on the ground so as not to lose her bearings, which she’d interpreted in her own way, and in the last semester of her fourth year she started an internship, unplanned. For some time afterwards, whenever she had to do a reality check, she would think of the slow, rambling voice of her elderly professor. In the meantime, she regarded her time in Paris as anomalous, and so she pushed the memories out of the circle of her daily life. Naturally, this was followed by a sense of loss, and sometimes she had the impression she’d left something behind. But before long, she had relegated the memories to the back of her mind. While Sumin was surrounded by galley proofs, moaning with the neck pain she developed when she turned thirty, Jeong-woo was graduating from the École des Beaux Arts. She went on to win a prize in a French regional competition the following year. Jeong-woo sent her links to newspaper articles, and much to Sumin’s amusement, gave her advice filled with terms she’d picked up randomly, like “housing subscription” and “term insurance,” things she knew nothing about. Whenever she felt that Jeong-woo was treating her like she did when they first met, and whenever she pictured her shy, childlike smile at the sight of the milky-white chicken, Sumin wondered what kind of adult she was becoming. This feeling was unrelated to growing up. One time, as she was perusing the dictionary, she came across the perfect word—gutae, meaning “old moss.” “Welcome, Sumin. I missed you so much,” Jeong-woo greeted Sumin when she arrived at Gyeongju Station. Five years had passed. Jeong-woo embraced Sumin and kissed her lightly on both cheeks. It was the French style of greeting that they would have been mortified to use when they actually lived together in Paris. You’re really French now. She was wearing a black muslin scarf around her neck in the middle of summer, her long hair in a loose chignon. She had on black jeans and flats. This look was familiar to Sumin, but it somehow seemed foreign to Korea, like oil in water. Behind her, Sumin noticed bushes lining the well-paved road. Small, hard, glossy leaves were piled up in layers under red flowers the size of a baby’s fists, as though they were holding something precious. After winning the art competition, Jeong-woo had been invited to participate in a curated exhibition in Korea, and she arrived a month before the opening. The exhibition was supposed to be held in Anguk at an old bathhouse that had been converted into a gallery, but for some reason she’d gone to Gyeongju directly after arriving at Incheon airport. When Jeong-woo invited her down to see her, Sumin had mixed feelings as to whether to go or make an excuse not to. She hadn’t spoken to Jeong-woo much recently, probably because they were living in different countries doing different things. Jeong-woo, who’d moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a suburb of Paris, spent her evenings with her boyfriend walking around different sites in the village where she lived looking for traces of Van Gogh, while back in Seoul, Sumin relieved the day’s stress by surfing internet shopping sites and drinking cans of beer with side dishes of blood sausages or mandu she’d buy on the way home. Even so, it was hard to turn down her friend’s invitation. Jeong-woo had given her a lot back then. Also, she found it reassuring to be in touch because Jeong-woo was the one person she could talk to about a time that was fading from her memory. Jeong-woo said she’d been in Gyeongju for a week as she led Sumin to the taxi stand. “Where’s the painting?”Sumin had only ever seen the painting in a photo that accompanied the newspaper article that Jeong-woo had sent her. The work, which covered the wall of a gallery, was out of focus and blurry. When they lived together, all Sumin had seen of her work were a few acrylics done on palm-sized scraps of paper. Jeong-woo had boasted that they were her portfolio. Sumin didn’t know much about art, but had privately doubted whether her friend would ever be accepted to the École des Beaux Arts owing to age restrictions. Afterwards, Jeong-woo only painted large paintings, as if self-conscious about that time. Jeong-woo had been grumbling about how she was going to get the painting into the country in her last email. “I sent the canvas to be re-stretched. That’s why I came all the way down here.” She knew someone in Gyeongju who’d introduced her to a craftsman, she added.“Re-stretched?”Jeong-woo said she’d been very lucky, but Sumin didn’t understand what she meant by this. Instead of explaining further, she spoke in general terms, saying she’d come down to prepare for the exhibition.“Sumin, have you ever tried kong-guk? Warm bean soup? You can dunk rice ball doughnuts in it, or crack raw eggs into it.”Sumin made a face, unable to imagine these combinations, and Jeong-woo patted her arm. Her skin was chilled from the air conditioning in the taxi, and this warm touch gave her goosebumps. “You’re still just a baby.”“That’s impossible.”No one treated her like a child, then or now, except Jeong-woo. “I remember you reciting the verb conjugation page every morning at dawn. You sounded like a child memorizing the Thousand Character Classic.”Jeong-woo went on, adding that Sumin’s voice got louder and louder to the point that she was scared the tenant below would hear and complain. Sumin had never heard this story. Every morning she had written out verb conjugations and memorized them, but she hadn’t spoken louder than a whisper. She couldn’t be sure, though. She realized again that there was no privacy in the house. The apartment had no doors, so from her room, she could hear a fork hit a plate all the way over in Jeong-woo’s room. The only other door besides the front door was the one to the bathroom. She sheepishly turned her head toward the window. Even though they were well beyond the station, empty fields surrounded them on either side. Her gaze was drawn to the continuous row of bushes extending from the station, standing tall in the hot sunlight. The city was neat and notably clean, so clean that it was devoid of buildings.“Crepe myrtle trees,” Jeong-woo said, and Sumin turned towards her. Jeong-woo’s eyeliner had smeared and darkened the area around her eyes, maybe due to the heat.“Aren’t they what you keep looking at?”“Oh.”Sumin turned back, and old houses started to appear in the distance one by one.“Isn’t that a pomegranate tree?” Behind their guesthouse was a garden with a pond and a variety of small trees. The garden was charming, with something of a foreign feel, perhaps because of the pomegranate tree next to the pond. The tree was a nice height, about 2 meters tall, dotted with unripe pomegranates. Sumin had never seen one before. The crown at the tip of the fruit made it look like a deflating balloon. “There are pomegranate trees in Gyeongju?” she wondered aloud, marveling at the sight. She circled around and touched the smooth green fruit hanging precariously from the slender branches. In the meantime, Jeong-woo stuffed Sumin’s travel bags in a corner and sat perched out on the narrow wooden veranda talking on the phone. Judging by the French she overheard, Sumin could guess that Jeong-woo was talking to her boyfriend. She’d heard a few things about him: how he was born to an Algerian mother and a French father, and how he’d trained as a skier until he was in high school when he seriously injured his spine at seventeen and had to quit sports. She’d also heard that he changed plans and became a high school teacher after majoring in mathematics in university. Early in the relationship, she’d also heard many complaints about him. One story she remembered was about how he went to London with a friend for a fortnight, and all that he gave Jeong-woo when he came back was a keychain engraved with a book shop logo. Sumin still associated him closely with this story. “The French are like that. They’re so cheap.”He’d presented the keychain to Jeong-woo with such reverence and care that she was expecting it to be an engagement ring. At the beginning, the more she’d thought about it, the more annoyed she’d been that he’d gone on a trip without her. Then, after a while, she tried to justify why he’d given her the keychain. After all, it might just have been a French custom to exchange trinkets. As more time passed and their relationship stabilized, she changed her interpretation and said that his frugality and his family-oriented nature were his greatest strengths. Other than this, the stories that Jeong-woo told her about him were bound up with her personal feelings, and Sumin often struggled to relate. Jeong-woo said she didn’t love everything about him, but the tragedies he’d suffered made him lovable. Whenever he wronged her somehow, she’d think of him lying in the hospital for six months or so without being able to move after he’d fallen off a cliff while in Switzerland for off-season training. If she imagined him as a boy grimacing in pain at night, worrying that he would never walk again, she felt her heart soften out of guilt. She thought she should have watched over him back then.Sumin was confused, and asked her how she could have watched over someone she didn’t even know. “Sumin, don’t you know? Love transcends time and space.”Whenever Jeong-woo touched the long scar that ran along his spine, it felt like a crack that she could squeeze into. The year before last, they’d entered a civil union and moved in together. In the meantime, Sumin began a short-lived relationship with a business associate ten years her senior. On the basis of his age and relatively high social position, this man tried to teach her everything, making her feel like dating was an extension of her work. It was exhausting. When Jeong-woo asked what his name was, she jokingly told her the name of the male protagonist in a late Joseon period enlightenment novel instead. It seemed like Jeong-woo had never heard the title of this book before. But even if she didn’t know what Korea’s first modern novel was, she knew much more about romance than Sumin did.Jeong-woo’s romance was elevated to a sacred plane, and Sumin’s was mundane by comparison. But after it ended, she had to contend with the aftermath, and this was worse because they were business associates. The exhaustion and suspicion from those rumors went on for a long time and Sumin grew disinterested in any type of blind dates. At this time, Sumin was thirty, and she thought she knew something about life. Monotony washed over her existence like a tidal wave, as if it had been waiting for her. She no longer expected coincidences or relationships ordained by fate. She didn’t think the future would hold any of the moments of the unexpected that she’d known when she studied abroad. However, Jeong-woo finished talking on the phone and took her to the restaurant, and they were immersed in conversation when Suchan opened the door and came in, and Sumin’s eyes grew wide, like someone encountering something new and strange. She’d first met Suchan at a gathering of Korean students that Jeong-woo had known when she was taking language classes in Grenoble. They’d reminisced fondly about a night club van that used to pick them up outside of the language school dormitory every Saturday evening. Sumin was only a new arrival, and they looked socially well-positioned in her eyes. At a Korean drinking establishment, with great bravado, they ordered an overpriced chicken side dish to accompany several bottles of soju that cost 10 euros apiece. Jeong-woo spoke little that day, was stuck in the long, dark tunnel of life as a language student. Maybe this was why she’d pestered Sumin to come along. Sumin remembered Jeong-woo’s ambiguous expression at the gathering long after she returned to Korea. Thinking back on it, Jeong-woo’s most difficult time as an international student must have been when Sumin was there. It was just before she exited the tunnel—people exiting a tunnel, or people climbing a mountain before the final peak, are at their most pessimistic. Besides, Jeong-woo was barely twenty-four years old even if she played the role of an older sister and guide to Sumin. If she could go back, Sumin would maybe pour Jeong-woo another glass of that expensive soju. She’d pat her on the back and tip her off about the future, telling her, “Hold on just a little longer and you’ll enter the school you have your sights on, and in a few years, you’ll come home triumphantly to your own solo exhibition in Anguk.” But Sumin knew none of this at the time, and was silent as a tree.Sumin was even more uncomfortable after they moved to the noraebang, and she was scanning her surroundings looking for a chance to get up. There was a guy downing bottles of Orangina and talking quietly with his neighbor. She noticed him take the remote control and carefully punch in a number. She’d exchanged names with him, but that was all, as they weren’t curious about each other. Actually, she could sense that no one in the group wanted to get to know her. Gathered there were big sensitive egos, a mixture of accomplishments and hopes, and they swayed like a pendulum from self-confidence to worry about the future. No one had any reason to be interested in Sumin, who had yet to prove anything. The song started and the guy straightened up from where he’d been slumped on the sofa. He was someone her age, who clutched the mic in both hands and sang a heartfelt rendition of Boa’s “Amazing Kiss.” This was Suchan. “What was the name of that Chinese girl who liked jangjorim? Was it Rangrang?”Suchan glanced at Sumin as he corrected Jeong-woo. “It was Ringring.” Sumin looked at him from the side and then turned her gaze to the kong-guk on the table. Suchan had sat down beside her quite naturally upon arriving. He wore a polo shirt with jeans, and he reeked of sour sweat. Suchan glanced at the makgeolli and pajeon that had been pre-ordered, and expertly went through the complicated process of ordering kong-guk. The menu was posted on the wall, divided into different sections according to the many possible options: sticky doughnuts, black sesame seeds, sesame seeds, honey, and raw eggs. Sumin looked out of the corner of her eye at the watery kong-guk that came out in quite a large ceramic bowl. Suchan asked, “Would you like some?” It was the first thing he’d said to her. As if given the signal, she started to feel attuned to Suchan’s presence. She listened carefully to the conversation the other two were having, as if she were straining to make out their voices from across the room. And she learned a few things; for example, that to “re-stretch a canvas” was to put a painting on a canvas frame after it had been removed and rolled up in a tube for safe transport, and that it was Suchan who’d introduced Jeong-woo to a craftsman renowned for his skill in this art. Suchan had worked at a landscaping firm in Seoul before moving down to Gyeongju a year ago. She listened to them talk about Suchan’s girlfriend Ringring, who’d liked jangjorim because it was reminiscent of food she had in China. While Suchan was sleeping, she’d eaten up the precious stores of it he’d had sent from Korea, and Suchan had called Jeong-woo about it and cried over the phone. Finally, their relationship came to an end when he returned to Korea to do his military service. Sumin also heard this, but it went in one ear and out the other. “Let’s not talk about it. It’s been a long time since we broke up.” Noticing that Suchan had lowered his voice, Sumin took several sips of makgeolli. Suchan filled her empty cup and pushed the pajeon dish towards her. Now that he was older, everything seemed to come naturally to him. This was likely true for Sumin as well. But maybe because she was tipsy, these bits of information were fragmented, quick to disappear or randomly jump to the fore. This state of mind was very different from her usual one as an editor who prioritized context. Unimportant words like “girlfriend” or “I fell asleep” would clump together in her mind before slowly dissolving away.Sumin’s first date with Suchan was in the late fall, about two months before she returned to Korea. She’d heard that the first snow had fallen in Seoul, but in Paris it rained miserably, day after day. In the period just before she left, she’d wake up in the morning and think, I can’t believe such a dreary place exists. I just want to go home. Her coat was getting heavier and heavier with moisture in the tiresome weather. Owing to the high calcium in the water and the nagging of her language teacher, it seemed like half of her hair had fallen out, and if things kept on, she’d end up bald. Suchan was studying horticulture in Strasbourg, and he took her to the place he knew best in Paris, the Jardin des Plantes. Sumin still remembered her disappointment at seeing all the withered lilies when they reached the pond. After that, her relationship with Suchan cooled off to the extent that when she was returning to Korea they barely texted each other farewell. She blamed this entirely on the one lame date. Suchan, oblivious to her feelings, pointed to the shallow, dirty pond where dry flower stalks remained here and there like bent wire. It looked like a wasteland. He said, “I cleared those away yesterday, too.” Sumin asked, “What?” and he replied, “They’re called ‘bu.’ These days, I clear away bu from the school garden every day. When it’s all cleared away, then that’s the start of winter for the garden. It’s teeming with dead leaves and gastropods, and seeds that will sprout into something, we don’t know what.” Then he gently tugged on the stiff sleeve of Sumin’s wool coat and whispered, “Would you like me to show you a little slug?” “Someone called to say they were selling a Zelkova tree. The owner boasted that the tree had been carefully tended for generations by a family whose ancestor had passed the first round of the national exam. So I didn’t think it would be anything special.” The place where Suchan worked was technically a landscaping company, but a large portion of their business was in buying and selling trees, perhaps because the owner had been doing it for a long time. Sumin wondered how Suchan went from studying horticulture to coming down to Gyeongju and selling trees, but she didn’t ask. When you got to this age it was natural to have deviated a bit from your starting point. Sumin was used to this by now. Suchan said that the hardest thing about buying trees was going out to view them. The houses of the families selling mature trees were either abandoned or close to collapse, and most of the time they were located in mountain forests or on isolated tracts of land. Often, the location couldn’t be found by using GPS, or worse, the area wasn’t accessible by car. This was true for the client selling the Zelkova as well. “They told me to sing in a loud voice when I came. They’d come out to meet me when they heard me singing. Doesn’t it sound crazy?”However, Suchan did sing as he climbed the mountain. It wasn’t until he entered the forest that he understood his client’s instruction to sing out loud. The terrain was rough, and the forest was so deep that his cell phone didn’t have a signal. “So what did you sing?” Sumin joined the conversation at this point.“Ponyo.”“Ponyo?”“Yes. The theme song to that Studio Ghibli film, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.” They came out of the restaurant and were met by the warm, stuffy night air. While Jeong-woo was in the restroom, Suchan stood in a corner, took out a cigarette, and put it between his lips. There were no street lamps behind the restaurant, so it looked as if part of the village had been cut off. The cicadas made a high-pitched buzzing sound in the darkness. “Would you like a cigarette?”It seemed as if Suchan had forgotten she didn’t smoke. Or perhaps he was asking in case she’d somehow picked up smoking in the meantime. A lot of time had passed. Their conversation was stuck in a loop: cautious when they held out for the possibility of change and then quickly becoming more intimate when they recognized the same person they knew from the past. For example, the image of Suchan in the forest, shaking with fear, shouting out, “Ponyo, Ponyo, fishy in the sea,” was not drastically different from him as a student singing K-pop songs in the noraebang. Perhaps that was why she said yes. When he replaced the cigarette back in its pack and cautiously asked, “Would you like to go for a walk with me tomorrow?” Sumin nodded eagerly. Perhaps it was that the ordinary guy who’d taken her to the botanical gardens in Paris in early winter when there was nothing to see had appeared to her through time and space. Sumin’s attitude was the only thing that had changed. That night, lying next to Jeong-woo on a mattress rolled out on the floor in an outbuilding of the guesthouse, Sumin thought about patterns repeating themselves in life. She thought of her favorite music. In general, all music, whether it be sonatas, concertos, or orchestral songs, was supposed to return to a theme. The key to the repetition was not the repeated melody itself, but the long musical journey between repetitions, resulting in two entirely different interpretations of the same melody. Sumin believed that this principle of musical form applied to life as well. Many years later, she would reflect on that night and deem it all a superficial rationalization for getting back together with Suchan, but until she was interrupted by Jeong-woo’s sleepy voice, her head was filled with abstract notions like the forms and principles of life. “Hey Sumin, it’s the first time we’ve ever slept together under the same blanket, isn’t it? Even though we lived together for a year or so.”“Why would housemates have a reason to sleep with each other?” Sumin would always regret things after she spoke, thinking her answers were too short and logical. “But every night I could hear you breathing as you slept. We didn’t have doors to our bedrooms, you know.”“Right. Thank goodness for that. That’s why we were never lonely there.” Even in the years after she married Suchan and then divorced him, she sometimes recalled the hike they took together that morning in Gyeongju. A cloud of morning fog was gradually clearing in a place with the sacred name Gyerim, which meant “forest where the rooster crows.” The trees in this place had long branches that drooped down, supported in places by stakes, and they looked to Sumin not so much like plants but animals, moaning in pain, unable to manage their large girth. They were spaced at regular intervals as if by mutual agreement, but their dense foliage blocked any light from coming in. This was probably why the only thing growing nearby was moss, covering the ground like a carpet as if tended by human hands. The forest felt magical, but dreary at the same time. Suchan told her that the forest used to have a large concentration of hackberry trees, and since jewel beetles had the habit of laying eggs in crevices in the hackberry bark, it was a jewel beetle habitat as well. But because craftsmen at that time were using jewel beetle wings as ornamentation on saddles for horses, the jewel beetles there had all died out. As she listened, the earth, wet with morning dew, rose around her feet, and she felt as if she would sink into the ground at any moment. “I know it’s strange, but when my mother died, I thought of you.”Sumin turned her head at these unexpected words, and Suchan fixed his gaze on the only pagoda tree in the forest and continued. “I wanted to call you, but I couldn’t. You would have thought I was crazy. We weren’t even seeing each other.”That day remained etched in Sumin’s memory, but it was not because of the bashful look on his face when he confessed his love. Nor was it because of the firmness in his voice as he told Sumin, who was awed by the size of the tree, that a forest dominated by a giant tree like that would have no future. Rather, it was because of his profile as he pointed at a round empty hole they’d come across in the middle of the forest. She couldn’t guess the purpose of this pit. The sun beat down on it, and the light looked like water pooling around it. Suchan said that he often stared at these holes. When he’d look at the pits that were left after he removed trees, he’d imagine throwing into them all of the senseless anger that flared up within him. Then the anger would fade, he said, his gaze slightly downcast. Sumin’s most striking memory from that day in the forest was his profile as he said this. After they were married, Sumin encountered this look many times. At first, she thought that he was pondering something. He was absorbed in thought, keeping one ear cocked, and if given enough time he would arrive at an answer on his own. It wasn’t until they started to talk about divorce that she realized it was just his characteristic way of defending himself in a crisis. He just pretended to be listening carefully or thinking when he really was just biding his time. He’d probably been doing this for a while. When his mother suddenly died of a stroke right after he finished his military service, and he gave up on going to graduate school as a result; when he interned at his first landscape architectural firm and had to work nonstop on CAD design projects while his manager tapped him on the back of the head with a ruler; when his father became obsessed with family after his mother died and forced him to sit with his older brother at the meal table every Sunday afternoon even after he was married; when he had to endure his father’s complaints about Sumin, who didn’t attend church, bear children, or even call to say hello—then he would adopt this posture, pretending to be listening, while he was perhaps imagining the round hole left by an uprooted tree. He would cast his anger into it until he eventually became the hole himself. But Sumin had no way of knowing this and she just gazed at the circle of light, like a miracle, in the dense forest. Translated by Kari Schenk by Kim Eugene